Endless Paradigm

ok, i didn't know where else to post this.

so...  a while ago the screen in my archos got broken (read here) i had real problems finding replacement screens and in the end i just gave up. since then I've been using it as a portable hard drive.  until this morning. last  night i noticed that the battery life was pretty awful. it had been charging off my dads computer for about 7 hours (i was downloading a torrent with a portable utorrent running off the archos) once it was finished i unplugged it and took it upstairs. in the time it took to get from my dads computer to mine the battery went dead (about 15 seconds). i thought nothing of it and went to bed.

this morning though i was going to start another download, i plugged the archos into the computer and tried to turn it on. it turned on but the hdd activity led stayed constantly lit and the computer wouldn't recognise it. so i took it back upstairs and cracked it open to see if there was anything obviously wrong. there was.

as soon as i undid two of the screws te back plate popped off which was a bit unusual.  then i saw the battery. it  had bulged to about twice its normal size and  there was a sticky liquid around the edges (battery acid  i think). i wiped this off and disconnected the battery. its now wrapped in plastic bags and is  waiting to be recycled. i washed my hands obviosly. the hard  drive  seems  to have escaped the battery acid though.

here's the problem, there are things on the hard drive i need but i have no way of reading it. i have a card reader that the hard drive fits into but the card reader can't provide enough power to run it. so i tried putting  the hard drive back into the archos and using that. but  the archos won't turn on without the battery. even when its  plugged into the mains adapter it won't start.

so here's the question. does anyone know of a way i could read the  drive? like using a resistor to fool the archos into thinking there is a battery connected.  preferrably  a free solution as I'm a bit skint  at the mo.

anyone? there are e-piggies on offer.

What do you mean by the drive fitting into the card reader?  Do you mean that the HDD itself is small enough to fit in a card slot?!

don't really know Archos... wat type pf HDD is it? can't you get a new battery?

ZiNgA BuRgA Wrote:What do you mean by the drive fitting into the card reader?  Do you mean that the HDD itself is small enough to fit in a card slot?!

the hard drive is about the size of  a laptop hard drive but  the interface connector sticks out.  it fits into a Compact flash slot.

feinicks Wrote:don't really know Archos... wat type pf HDD is it? can't you get a new battery?

the hard drive is a Toshiba HDD1442 MK3006GAL  30Gb. Manual is HERE

http://www.gizoo.co.uk/Products/PCGaming...Driver.htm

Is that the kind of thing your looking for...i know you mention price as an issue, but do you mean something like that?

There are external laptop harddrive casings, which allow you to hook up the HDD to a USB port, however, if the HDD's connection isn't the standard laptop HDD connection, it won't work...

Here are a couple of  photos. sorry about the quality, i took them with a webcam.

the drive itself, notice the sticky out bit:
[attachment=1631]

The interface  connector. the manual says  the drive  uses some  derivative of IDE but  I'm not  sure:[attachment=1632]

@roberth, I'm looking for something more like this. except with a male connector to connect to the female connector on the hdd. i don't mind how it connects to the computer, i can cater for pretty  much anything. (usb, firewire, ide, sata, etc...) also if anyone knows of a way to use the arcos as a reader?

edit: I'm off  to get my camera, those pics are quite bad.

That's interesting.  Looks like a laptop HDD interface, however, with female connectors (it's typically pins).
My laptop HDD has (22+2) x2 rows of pins (with one pin missing near the middle).

Well, if you can't find any special adapter, I guess you could try mocking something up with wires or something...

new photos:
[attachment=1633]

The interface connector:
[attachment=1634]

i have the parts to do that, its just the skill and precision with a soldering iron. i have the hard drive connector from an old mp3 player. or i could just use lots of pieces of stiff wire  and lots of gaffer tape. another idea i have is to 'make' a new battery for the archos. if i can find a source of 3.3v (the original battery voltage) and  connect it to where the battery connects internally i could run the archos on that. my first  thought was my computer psu but i don't  particularly want to mess with that because its overloaded  as it is. (350watt on a computer that need 500watt, not that it would make a huge amount of difference)[/quote]

^ Yeap, that looks like a HDD connector - 22 pins (the other ones aren't used by external HDD casings).

Might go ask your comp store to see if any connectors are available.  If not, you may have to improvise.