Brand new PCMCIA IBM Portable Drive bay - no life?

[solidpro]

Hi

I managed to source some new in box thinkpad Portable Drive Bays (00N7940) with a view to trying to use them on some older hardware (Transnote / x20 for example)

I can't get any life out of them! They will only accept 3 x AA batteries (no power supply input at all) and have a fixed wired PCMCIA connector. Does anyone know what I'm missing? I've tried 2 x new ones and same effect. My guess is that only some PCMCIA card slots provide the necessary comptibility through a DC rail or signal or something and that isn't happening on what I'm testing on.

My other thought is the drives I'm testing it with aren't actually compatible - the connector is centred, which means although I have a huge pile of thinkpad optical drives, only 1 of them actually has the connector in the right place.

Any ideas out there?

Thanks

[kfzhu1229]

I have some vague memories of me getting that thing to work with a thinkpad 240.
I remember first you need those batteries and also the correct PCMCIA driver for it to load properly.
Then, that specific Ultraslimbay version of the drive ONLY works with a CD-ROM drive (or maybe a CD-RW drive). I remember sticking in a DVD-ROM drive and it would still not read DVDs, but CD still works fine (but the same drive would read DVD just fine on my 600) I don't think that would work with a floppy or ZIP drive.
Also, Ultrabay 2000 and Ultraslimbay drives have the connector at different positions. You can swap the Ultraslimbay drive cage and connector over onto the Ultrabay 2000 drive and then it will work.

[solidpro]

Hi

Ah ok thanks. I got these in sealed new boxes so I know i have the correct cables and everything.... it's just completely dead - no lights, no noises.... I'm going to try them with a few different era thinkpads to see if different machines has more luck....