Thinkpads Forum

On the other side of the world I have squirreled away a Thinkpad 310ED with an external floppy drive. I am pretty sure that the connector for the external flopplies is the same on th 310, 570 & 600. But does anyone know whether there is true compatibility, especial in DOS?

Thanx,

cure

I'll take a crack at (partially) answering this but as I don't own a 310ED, it may not be helpful...

I could not find any Hardware Maintenance Manual for the 310ED system . Nor could I find a part number (FRU) for the 310ED external floppy on IBM's site. I did find two FRUs for a 310ED external floppy drive with Yahoo!: 05K8827 and 05K9040, along with a cable: FRU 11J8629. On the same site, there are FRUs for external floppy drives for the 570 and 600 systems but they are all different. From that, I can only infer that they are somehow incompatible.

The external floppy drive (FRU 05K6187 / ASM 05K5907) that I use with my 600-series systems and the T-series port replicator uses a 26-pin Molex connector. It does work fine in DOS with my 600X and T2x systems as I use it to boot diagnostic programs. If the 310ED floppy does not use this same type of connector then for sure it won't work. However, as it appears the cable between the 310ED laptop and the external floppy housing is detachable, there may be others that will fit the ports of the 570 and 600.

Sorry I couldn't be more help....

edit: Just looked on eBay and found somebody selling a 310ED with external floppy. Maybe you could ask them what the part number and cable looks like?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0042813504

The floppy from my 600 wont plug into my 310ED. The connector on the 310ED is larger. The FRU is 05K8827. The cable for the 310ED uses the same size connector on both ends of the cable. Wow! That one on eBay sold for $910.00.

Davemci wrote:Wow! That one on eBay sold for $910.00.

Not a real result. It appears to be yet again another pair of hijacked eBay accounts running up the bid price for fun.