Nas-4010 Caddy Pinout/Help/Miracle!

[peteec]

Hi all,

I recently brought a Nas off fleebay,When it arrived it didnt have any caddies with it and it wasn't a standard interface plug. its an ide interface,but the hotswap connector is sca 80,So i guess the caddies got a board that converts the plug back to ide.

I can find very little about it anywhere on the net,and so far i've managed to find caddies,but at the price of £130 each!!,Since i need 4 not a very cost effective project for a limited ide box.

Then thought i could maybe pinout the connector and hopefully "work out" what went where,This seems to be proving a bit more of a mission that i'd of hoped,(i've not had smoke yet tho ..),Been on it 2 weeks so far and made very little progess yet.

I have managed to work out a rough pin guide... however since the connector has 80 pins and ide has 40 + power connector (4 pin pc molex)... nothing yet is looking like a logical layout.

The 80 pin connector seems to use the first 3 pins at both ends (and on both sides) for the 5V and 12V for the drive,and every other pin inbetween seems to be grounded/missed out,so that leaves me with 68 pins which isn't enough for a full ide interface if missing every other one out.


I do have some rough info that i've worked out so far for some of the pins,as in which pin is going to which ic etc,If anyone fancys a look??

Also wondering if anyone knows which pins on a ide interface i DO NOT NEED,As this would also solve my problem of not having enough pins.Many homebrew sites sugguest that i dont need upto about 8 of them!!


Thanks in advance for any help or thoughts on this.

 

[duffy]

Sorry, no - but I would suggest buying one of the overpriced caddies and having a look at it. You could trace it out easier, and there may be additional circuitry to facilitate the hot swap operation on the caddie board.

 

[peteec]

Hi,Thanks for your reply,
I too was also wondering about this fact that the caddie might have some sort of processor that is only supplied to the maker.Patterned for them only maybe?
i tried looking up some of the other ic's one of them being a p15c 34x245b which seems to be some sort of i/o switching device(this seems to connect to the data lines of hard drive),and the other was a promise pss10198e which i couldnt find anything on,but i found a little by taking the E off,neither of which helped me much.
I'm trying different things with it as it would be a great little box and exactly what i need,who knows i might strike lucky!,Also dont wanna have the "fleebays done me again" feeling so the thought of that is keeping me motivated!!

Cheers for your thoughts

 

[duffy]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Be tragic to bust your hump trying to work out that connector only to find out it needs a custom programmed microcontroller to park the heads (or whatever) during a hot swap.

Or it might have some decoding logic, something that would explain all those missing pins, and if the decoding was done with a programmed logic array you would be screwed again.

It's a terrific looking enclosure and I hope you get it working.

 

[peteec]

Yea thanks man,

Currently still pinning out so when i finished i'll post it up and get peoples thoughts.
Waiting on a friend to take socket off for me too.. give me a clearer picture.

Thanks

 

[duffy]

I admire your spirit to beat fleaBay. I have a f-dup coil winder and other crap in my garage waiting for the same flea-beating spirit to arise within me.