[geeks] Talking to 1.8" ZIF UATA SanDisk SSD, or not

[JP Hindin]

Good morning all, I hope you're all safe and well;

I'm working on trying to figure out an AudioCodes Mediant 5000, which is a 
TDM gateway (T1/E1 or DS3, amongst others). The machine is a compactPCI 
crate with 2x CP2300 Sun Netra SBCs, 2x Performance Technology network 
switches (5x UTP, 2x fibre) and then AudioCodes TrunkPack cards which talk 
to the E1s/T1s/DS3s/STM/OC-3/etc.

Anyways. Ignoring the fact I've never used any compactPCI hardware before, 
let alone this gear, and I'm learning how it all works together and talks 
to itself (I think it has an internal network port that runs on the PCI 
backplane connecting the boards somehow, weird) I have been trying to be 
careful and get disks imaged of the Sun SBCs before attacking them.

One of the SCs I have has a 1.8" IDE disk, a SanDisk UATA 5000, which has 
a "ZIF" interface. Unfortunately I'm not quite sure how to talk to this 
type of disk. My understanding is that it's strictly an IDE interface with 
a little bit of pin swapping and power combined on the microribbon, but 
the adapters I've found all seem to have a microcontroller on them - I did 
purchase one of the most common style but whenever the disk is plugged 
into it the adapter decides to eat my IDE bus (no disks on either bus will 
show up all of a sudden). I'd assume I had something upside down but all 
of the cables/connectors are keyed, and the ribbon only has contacts on 
one side. And master/slave/CS doesn't seem to be appropriate when on the 
2nd bus, disks on the 1st bus won't show up, which is not IDE behaviour I 
recall running into before.

I suppose some idiot could've put the connector onto the adapter upside 
down... But I'm wondering if I'm making this much harder than it needs to 
be.

Anyway. Long winded. But if you have a good way of talking to such a 
drive, I'm eager for wisdom.

Thank you!

  - JP