Linea Recta wrote:
Here I have an old Maxtor diamondmax plus 8 with 2 IDE interface pins bent.
I believe the drive could be OK, but when I tried to straigten the two
pins... yes, they broke off :-((
It is the last (or first?) couple.
How can I identify what pin numbers they have? It is the pins nearest to the
master/slave jumper.
Is there any chance I can still use the drive?

http://pinouts.ru/HD/AtaInternal_pinout.shtml

The IDE connector has a keying slot on one long edge,
and there is a "missing" pin which is the tenth pin
from the pin 1 end. The "missing pin" should be
side-opposite from the keying slot in the shell.
Since the pins go 2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20...
that "missing pin" is actually numbered "20".

Using a drive as reference here, I think that means you've
busted off pins on the "GND / RESET" end. Losing a ground
isn't necessarily a big deal, but I don't know the details
of how 80 conductor cables are made, to tell you whether
one ground is used to drive the 40 ground wires on the cable
or not. If the broken ground only went one place, it might
not be that important to overall function. Losing RESET
doesn't sound like a good thing...

I was going to say something like "just replace the connector
with a soldering iron" but when I looked at mine in more
detail, it's a surface mount connector. And that means the
spacing would be tight, and less worthy of a "home project"
than an old thruhole connector would have been. I've probably
replaced a thruhole connector like that, but it's still a
"swear word" experience. You need to use the solder sucker
and solder wick, to clean the holes in preparation for a replacement
right-angle thruhole connector.

In a scene of desperation, you'd also have the option of
soldering a ribbon cable right to the drive. (I would use
an older 40 wire cable in that case, then cut a connector
off the "two connector" end. Using a 40 wire cable, is to
avoid having to figure out what to do with an 80 wire cable.)

So if your connector is a surface mount one, things
aren't looking good for doing a repair. Maybe you could
get it off the board, with hot air, but then the fun part
would be getting the new one on. If there is a high quality
solder mask, it's easy. The solder won't stick to a solder
mask, and masking the contacts for a surface mount connector,
helps prevent solder shorts between contacts. But you really
need the proper tools for the job. Just pointing a heat gun
at the thing, is going to melt solder on small adjacent components.
and that isn't good. A hot air rework station, you buy an adapter
with the right shape, to just heat the area that needs to be melted.
(Our rework station had about 20 different adapters in the drawer
underneath it.) And that's how you'd get another surface mount
connector properly fastened.

I suppose you could always take a twisted pair of wires,
make the black wire GND, make the red wire RESET, and make a
connection from the motherboard to the drive, to bypass the
open circuit caused by the connector. That would be yet
another option. RESET may not require transmission line quality
connections, so it might work. Whereas, doing that with
"DD7", "DD8" and the rest of the data bus, would be much more
risky. Using a twisted pair, is to try to match the impedance
of the cable.

Paul