Dying IDE Market Provides Opportunity To Repurpose Enclosure

mrburnette

Senior Member
I remember upgrading this current notebook IDE hard disk a couple of years back and thinking, Wow... I can get twice the drive for my money if I needed SATA. At the time, I purchased a couple of the small 2.5" external drive enclosures... one for the drive which would be surplus after the upgrade and one for a drive given to me by a friend that had upgraded! I think I paid about $15 each for those USB enclosures.

Today, while wandering through Microcenter, I came across this:
IDE External Cabinet and I did a double-take on the price: $3.99 U.S. That is for the aluminum case, plastic front and rear bezels, and a USB cable (one of those 2-headed monsters.) But always keen on using something in an unintended way, I saw these as very nice PICAXE project boxes. There is a SPST switch, a push button (for the free on-touch backup software) and the USB connector and controller chip. A pic shows the guts.

I am thinking that the USB could be used for power, for power/charging rechargeable batteries, or for real serial use with serial-USB. For $2 more, the store had a nice black plastic enclosure which would be really nice if drilling or nipping were required to fit something like an LCD/OLED low-profile display. A piggyback will not work as the enclosure is to narrow.

As in all of my Blogs, your mileage may vary on this idea. But keep an eye open for stores moving old technology at really low prices. You just never know how it can be reused until you put a few neurons to work pondering the possibilities.

Ray

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