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I had a 120GB IDE drive lying around so I tore apart my old Dalmatian iMac to do a drive upgrade. While I was at it I thought I'd take out the slot load cd drive as well since it's busted up, now that I have it apart and all, I was looking to put a new dvd drive inside.
I'm not to familiar with how all the parts and connectors work so my question/problem is as follows.
If you go to page 37 at http://www.scribd.com/doc/103447/iMac-G … mbly-Guide you will see the cable connecter which links the cd drive to the hd and than to the MB.
The problem is that once the cd drive is out it has an obscure apple designed I/O pin connecter on it which makes replacement impossible unless another original drive is installed. so I pull off the the CD/DVD Adapter Board which connects the weird arse apple I/O into a 50pin IDE seen on page 48 of that link.
40 pin IDE slot load drives are cheap and easily available (as 50pin isn't heard of at the local pc store) so if I buy a 50 to 40 IDE adaptor board and hook in a 40pin IDE drive will it still work or is that CD/DVD Adapter Board that converts Apple weird I/O to 50 pin needed still?
Or is there another possible solution I've overlooked? I'd like to keep the overall combined price under $90 btw.

Last edited by Aaron_R (2009-02-26 3:32 pm)