 The great search brought to you by Digikey and it fruit every single week lady it uses her powers of engineering for good To show you how to find things on digikey.com lady to what is the great search of the week of this week? Okay, so this week I've been working on floppy disk interfaces to design some hardware first up is a feather That'll connect to 24 sorry 34 pin IDC cables that are on the back of floppy disk drives What do you want to do these feather? This one. Nope. This one. Yeah, um And that's just kind of you know to make it easier for me to do the wiring because there's so many pins You need to connect it's not 34 pins because every other pins ground But it is like 12 or 13 pins or 14 pins so I can it can get a little hairy and then To do a little bit more advanced interfacing where you might want to talk to different drives I have a little like flippy floppy friend that will have all the different connector formats Yeah, thank you for the little watermark So that's not a watermark. I just like the logo. I gotta remember cuz I don't want watermark I don't want anyone to say now you're watermarking because we're not I like the little graphic we made Thank you for having a friend So and and make sure these are up on github London upper smith's license Right now and this is looking at a breadboard to 34 pin IDC connector and The IDC cable is it's quite easy. We've actually covered IDC cables on the great search. So this is a standard 30 pin 34 pin Cable if you have to do the twisted part you need to get this the special cable But for just like you go on to one drive just use a straight through IDC But the tough part that's a little bit more annoying is the power connector So let's go to the overhead I get you this power connector So this is the IDC connector, and I'm just using jumper cables right now, but it's a It's a 2 by 17 IDC and then there's this power connector and the power connector is It's looks like it's a 2.5 4 inch It looks like it's a 2.5 4 inch, but it's got like a keyed connector and One thing that's a little Scary is you know one side's 5 volts and the other side's 12 volts Now floppy drives don't actually use 12 volts, but just in case it's probably best not to Flip the cable around and especially if you're connecting, you know Maybe to drives that do acquire 12 volts Like I think I imagine five and a quarter inch disc drives require 12 volts because they're just that much bigger I don't know maybe eight inch drives, but that connector is spec For 12 volts and so I want to make sure that even though like you know today. I'm using just like a jumper cable I want to get those key connectors so that on my PCB when people connect There's no risk of mixing it up. So let's go to the computer and Okay So I actually just typed in to Google Floppy disk power connector because there's like what is what is this connector and there's nothing wrong with your googling you never know You might be able to get some good info. So this is a nice image on Wikipedia and you can see the keyed connector Red I think is five volts and then black black two grounds and then yellow Let me see the way around and then this is the the power connector here And this is the data connector there again the day country's IDC standard issue So this cable is actually called a burg connector Which I always find really funny because like Berg is like is a sub brand of Molex like it was purchased by Sorry Amphenol so even though it's like a full company like people like to say it's a burg connector and this is True of JSTs as well people like it's a JST or it's a Molex It's like okay. These are companies that manufacture hundreds of different characters. So like that's a weird way of calling it It's like what is that car model? Oh, it's a Ford a Ford what? Oh, just a Ford. Yeah, there's like many Ford cars. Anyways so this connector is Let's see. I have to pin out tonight. So yellows is 12 bit. Well, so what's nice is It's a 2.5 millimeter pitch and It is a Keyed so, you know, you definitely want to get the right one, but it's nice as they say here the part number which is a amp 171718264 To go dig a key and we type that in and sometimes you don't get the connector But in this case, you know, they actually do have them in stock, which is quite nice Like even though floppy disk drives are no longer made This connector is still available Which is you know, nice and fancy Oh, yeah Look at the 3d model here as well So what I'm gonna do is actually they use this connector because I'll be able to get cables that have dematching Polarium both sides custom-made I will say it's not a standard cable. So it's like if you're looking for that unditch key You're not gonna find it. However, I thought as a bonus I'd show how to get a Cannable a cable that might not be keyed, but you might be able to use even though it's not using the same exact part number Like it's a bit of a hack, but you'll find this especially a larger pitch cables You know if it's 2.5 millimeter you can find almost any 2.5 millimeter and kind of like get it to work And that might like hold you over until you get proper cables made So let's go to cable assemblies And in this case, it's it's even though it's a single line it would be called a rectangular Cable assembly and One thing they do like is the Digi-key search is updated recently So when you click on stuff it like does the sub selection highlighting. So for example If you go to the connector and you know, we know this is a 2.5 0.25 inch sorry 2.5 millimeter 0.098 inch it'll actually you can see like it Grays out the cable versions like the cable PID products that don't won't be available. So like there is no 60 pin 2.5 millimeter, which is expected but there is four Single row and When I apply this, yeah, you know, I like to apply cuz it kind of clears up some stuff and then let's look at what's in stock and There's a few cables and some of them. I'm like, I don't know this is kind of a little bit It's a little bit of a strange connector But this one, you know might work it's it's short. So maybe we could look for a longer one Let's see length Let's get one that's like six Six to you know, half a foot to a foot long Yeah, some of these are Yeah, like this one You know, it's it's a molex, but I think it it might work. I think like this one is a little bit um Weird this bizu style. It's like a waterproof connector Or this um jst xaf I think could also work like it looks like it would fit Um, I'm gonna order some of these and try it out. But you know before you get Cables custom made or you crimp cables. It's worth it to get like one of each of like, you know, the the matching pitch And like look type cables and even though you wouldn't use it in like a final production Again, I could get your prototyping up and running because like the cable that I want Isn't made normally and I'm gonna have to contact a pcb Cable making house and tell them. Hey, I want the floppy connector on both ends That's not a standard connector. Usually it go would go from like the motherboard power supply to the floppy disk. So um, this is the bonus round the connector is the is the um The te amp, uh, right angle, but this is the cable that I think might work as well Okay, and is that the great search? That's the great search. That's a great search a twofer