Thinkpads Forum

I snagged an IBM cable for laptop external drive P/N 05K2843. The part seems to be for a Thinkpad 570 external floppy drive. I don't have a 570 but figured I would someday. Anyway I was looking and one end seems to be the same as found on the 600 series machine and the other end is a perfect fit for a 770 series drive (the small one on the side). So can that cable be used on multiple machines and drives (like a cdrom?) if it fits?

I don't have one of my drives handy to double-check the P/N, but here's how I think it works.

First, you can ONLY use the floppy cable with a floppy drive. There is no option to plug it in to an external CD-ROM drive like one of the 770 (UltraBay II) drives.

Second, you can use a 570, 600, or 770 floppy drive with any of those machines externally -- the proprietary floppy interface that appears as an extra port on the thinkpads is the same port in all those machines -- and there are a good number of other models too -- as far back as the 760, maybe the 750 and 350 with the UltraBay I...?

Third, I don't think the 570 floppy has a detachable cable. I think it is the same as the 600 floppy, and the 600 series floppy has the cable built-in. Only the 770 series floppy and earlier (the 760/350/etc?) had detachable cables with plugs on both ends (one to attach to the floppy and one to the Thinkpad).

Lastly, I think that if you have a 600 floppy, you can actually pull the floppy out of its external housing (with its permanently attached cable) and use it like a standard UltraSlim Bay drive that slots in where the CD drive is on those machines. I'm not sure whether you can do something similar with the 570, but I think so.

Phil.