Conner HD Access Lights

[Scott Baret]

Just curious--any way to rig up an access indicator to an Apple-branded Conner 40MB? I have lots of these drives sitting around (pulls from Classics and LCs) and was hoping to stick one in an SE or maybe a IIci, replacing some of the more trouble-prone drives I have in my machines (namely any Quantum 80MB--seems any generation, any type of 80MB Quantum is a lemon).

[James1095]

Are there any pads for an LED or connector on the drive PCB? You might poke around with a logic probe and see if any of the I/O pins on the interface chip change states when the drive is accessed. Most hard drives I've seen do have some sort of provision for an activity light.

There were TONS of those 80MB Quantum drives out there, most late 90s 68k Macs I remember had them. I've had a couple of them fail myself too, although all these drives are old enough that it wouldn't surprise me to see them failing.

[volvo242gt]

The 80's I've had have been fairly reliable, well, except for one, which is currently in James1095's hands. Got one in my II, which came out of a IIci that I parted out. Works great. Loud, but no problems. Is one of trhe old half-height drives. They're not as bad as the Miniscribe 20's that seem to have come with most SE's. Those all seem to be dead.

In any case, look for a two pin connector at the opposite end of the circuit board from the connectors for power and the SCSI cable. If there isn't anything, then you'll just have to rely on the sound of the drive grinding away. Got a 250 in my IIci which has a built-in LED. Can be seen flashing through the floppy slot at certain angles.

-J

[James1095]

The drives I was thinking of are the newer 80MB Quantums. They were used in loads of LC-II's and my friend's IIsi came with one back in the day. I have a 40MB version in an LC that works but has noisy spindle bearings, but I don't think I have any 80s left that work.

[volvo242gt]

The one that was in my IIsi was the LP 1" height version. Looked identical to a LPS240S, just said LP 80S. Came stock with it. Worked fine until I developed an invalid sibling link that required refomatting to remove, since there was no DiskWarrior back then.

-J