From: Steve C. (stevec50_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Sep 14 2002 - 21:59:34 EDT
> where did you find the external USB housing and i/o
> electronics and how is it powered..?
I was afraid someone was going to ask that! The USB
housing is a common item on ebay but when I checked
around I found that most computer stores sell them now
too for around $40.00. The circuitry is all on a pcb
inside that also holds the hard drive. The USB port
on the pc provides power for the whole thing but it
isn't enough to run the hard drive from a laptop. It
worked fine on my desktop computer but neither the TP
nor a Toshiba Satellite would power up the hard disk
through the USB cable. It's current limited inside the
laptop. The housing has a connector for an external 5
volt input but there is no documentation or any
information included about using it. It turns out that
the outside of the coaxial connector is ground and the
center is for 5 volts so I made a cable to fit that
using an old ps/2 mouse cable. The cable came from one
of the Scancat scanners that Radio Shack was giving
away free and has both a male and female ps/2
connector so you can still use the port with the cable
connected. I cut off the Scancat and used the green
and bare wires for ground and red for the 5 volt
center connection.
By connecting both sources of power, the USB plus the
ps/2 keyboard port, the hard drive runs without any problem.
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