Cable to hook laptop drive to serial/parallel port?

[aceO07]

I know this exists, I'm just wondering what it's called and where I can get one. I had an old dell laptop floppy drive that can be hooked up to a cable and attached to the serial/parallel port and it would be recognized instantly and usable.

I'm refering to an internal laptop drive, not an external. I could take the drive out and use the cable install and it'd work fine. The cable just hooks up to the connectors on the drive and in turn is attached to a serial/parallel port on the laptop. I don't remember which port the cable connected to on the laptop. It was probably the parallel port though. It was a dell laptop drive, btw.

I'm asking this since my gf's laptop's internal connections to her laptop cdrw is fried. However, the drive seems to be fine, just can't test/use it. I'm just looking for a way to still use the drive through a cable.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Get a 5.25" external drive enclosure with USB port for $30-40, add a normal desktop internal CD / CDRW / DVD to it and connect it to the USB port on the laptop.

I don't know of any external enclosures to fit slim CD drives, they're all for full-size drives (or for hard drives).

You can buy the enclosures at newegg.com, compgeeks.com, www.dealsonic.com and drives anywhere.

 

[aceO07]

Yep. That's an alternative I was thinking of. I was hoping to try the much cheaper alternative first. I have the aforementioned cable in the office, somewhere. It's only for the floppy drive though. I'm pretty sure I've seen the cable for the cdrom drive too.

It was an internal laptop cdrw drive, so I want to try to use it to use again.

 

[aceO07]

I search the dell website. They only have a "spare" cable for their floppy drive. I must have been mistaken about seeing a cable for the cdrom drive.

External 5.25 enclosures for firewire aren't that cheap though..

 

[DaveSimmons]

Does the Dell even have a firewire port? Dealsonic has USB cases for under $30.

 

[aceO07]

Her laptop is a Fujitsu. Hmmm.. Maybe they have spare cables for their drives, or not..