| Sounds like its a power thing, perhaps the hard drive isnt getting enough power, so it wont start up its motor. Thats my guess. Iopener gives far less power than a laptop or desktop. One example of this is a USB hard drive that i have. if I use it on my iopener with just the usb cable, its light blinks because the USB port doesnt give enough power, but if I use an adaptor to the PS2 port, it'll get enough power and then work. But when i attach the usb hard drive to my desktop.. it works without the ps2 power adaptor. wierd. so maybe your hard drive (i know its not a usb hard drive) is very picky about the power, and since it cant draw enough power to start up, it wont. motors require the most power to start spinning, and there could be a current limiter downstream from the hard drive.
if you really really want to, you could buy one or two 5v voltage regulator chips (radio shack sells them, they're 1Amps) and then attach them to the 18v coming in (be careful not to accidently source your hard drive with 18 volts) - into the input line. then attach your hard drive's power supply to the voltage regulator's output, and attach the ground of the voltage regulator to the iopener's ground. if that doesnt work, then your hard drive's probably defective.
but.. i wouldnt recommend the above modification unless you have soldering and some electricial-engineering experience.. because it would be easy to accidently short-circuit somewhere and then fry your hard drive, and possibly the whole iopener. if you do the mod, dont attach your hard drive to the iopener through the ide port. just see if the hard drive spins up. if it does, congrats, it works. also verify that there is 5v using a voltmeter, and make sure that the input and output leads of the voltage regulator do not touch. | |
