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Kemakile's avatar

fantastic looking adapter, I will try to get one. How do you go about learning how to convert between HDD and CF? are there pinouts available? I've always wondered how this process goes

The Electron Vault's avatar

Thanks for dropping by. The signals/pinout was reverse-engineered from the original 632-0259 hard drive flex. Source files are here (see also DOC directory):

https://github.com/the-electron-vault/Apple/tree/main/iPod/iPod%204th%20Generation/632-0259

The 1.8” hard disk it plugs into is an off-the-shelf part with a known pinout, so it’s a pretty straightforward process to figure out what trace is what. Then it was just a matter of routing these to a CF card interface instead. It’s electrically identical to the 1.8” to CF adapter PCBs that are ubiquitous on ebay/aliexpress.

The flex pictured in the post is published here:

https://github.com/the-electron-vault/Apple/tree/main/iPod/iPod%204th%20Generation/TEV-AAPL-FPC-00001

See the “Manufacturing” section in the readme for details on how to order one for yourself.