Need a replacement for an old hard drive.

[Ben in TN]

I am trying to help a friend who owns a hotel. He has an antique IBM
desktop PC. I mean old and is supposed to be used with a IBM startup
diskette and another program alone. We're talking DOS here. Anyway, this
computer it used to run one of those signs made out of light bulbs where the
message can be changed on the sign. The problem is that this hard drive
does not have the regular 2 rows of pins for the ribbon cable to slide on
and it does not have a separate power plug either. The power supply in this
computer has only 2 plug and they plug directly onto the motherboard and
there are no other power plugs. The pins on the motherboard for the hard
drive cable look to be regular 2 pin IDE type of block and the one end of
the ribbon cable has that one one end and on the other end it slides over
the circuit board sticking out of the hard drive. The hard drive was made
by Sea-Gate Model# ST-125L and the IBM FRU P/N: 6128285 So I need another
hard drive similar to this one. I have looked at seagate.com but, they
don't show an exact match for the 125L. If I just knew for sure what the
specs were of this drive so I could get another similar one to work. It is
only 20 MB and doesn't need that much probably for what it does. Thanks
much in advance.

PS: Please e-mail me if you can help identify exactly what this hard drive
is and if you know where I can find a replacement.

Ben

 

[Rod Speed]

I am trying to help a friend who owns a hotel. He has an antique IBM desktop
PC. I mean old and is supposed to be used with a IBM startup diskette and
another program alone. We're talking DOS here. Anyway, this computer it used
to run one of those signs made out of light bulbs where the message can be
changed on the sign. The problem is that this hard drive does not have the
regular 2 rows of pins for the ribbon cable to slide on and it does not have a
separate power plug either. The power supply in this computer has only 2 plug
and they plug directly onto the motherboard and there are no other power
plugs. The pins on the motherboard for the hard drive cable look to be
regular 2 pin IDE type of block and the one end of the ribbon cable has that
one one end and on the other end it slides over the circuit board sticking out
of the hard drive. The hard drive was made by Sea-Gate Model# ST-125L and the
IBM FRU P/N: 6128285 So I need another hard drive similar to this one. I
have looked at seagate.com but, they don't show an exact match for the 125L.

Its a rather obscure special cable format drive that IBM used at one time.

There's a surprising number available for sale using google.

You may well find that all it needs is a low level format. Those stepper
motor drives suffer from sector jitter and a low level format fixes that.

If I just knew for sure what the specs were of this drive so I could get
another similar one to work.

You're out of luck on that.

 

[Peter]

I am trying to help a friend who owns a hotel. He has an antique IBM

desktop PC. I mean old and is supposed to be used with a IBM startup
diskette and another program alone. We're talking DOS here. Anyway, this
computer it used to run one of those signs made out of light bulbs where the
message can be changed on the sign. The problem is that this hard drive
does not have the regular 2 rows of pins for the ribbon cable to slide on
and it does not have a separate power plug either. The power supply in this
computer has only 2 plug and they plug directly onto the motherboard and
there are no other power plugs. The pins on the motherboard for the hard
drive cable look to be regular 2 pin IDE type of block and the one end of
the ribbon cable has that one one end and on the other end it slides over
the circuit board sticking out of the hard drive. The hard drive was made
by Sea-Gate Model# ST-125L and the IBM FRU P/N: 6128285 So I need another
hard drive similar to this one. I have looked at seagate.com but, they
don't show an exact match for the 125L. If I just knew for sure what the
specs were of this drive so I could get another similar one to work. It is
only 20 MB and doesn't need that much probably for what it does. Thanks
much in advance.

PS: Please e-mail me if you can help identify exactly what this hard drive
is and if you know where I can find a replacement.

Ben

http://www.computertradeexchange.com/inventory/SEAGATE.html