Anyone used a HP Kittyhawk drive?

[Alex Eisenhut]

I'm wondering how well these drives work these days? Since there is a warning about not plugging them in backwards but there are no clear markings about which way is forwards on the drives.

Anyone use these recently?

[helius]

This drive was used on the Dauphin DTR-1 handheld computer, and uses the PCMCIA Type III connector format. PC Cards usually have an offset notch to prevent upside-down insertion, but the committee designers rather unhelpfully made the power and ground pins symmetric. The consequence is that if the drive is inserted upside down, ground will still be connected to ground, but the Vcc and Vpp1 (+5 and +12 V) will be reversed, which will destroy any TTL logic on the drive.
In case the drive has no connection to Vpp1 at all, you could identify its orientation by using diode test between putative pins 17 and 1, for some arbitrary orientation, and if it tests as low impedance, you have found Vcc and Gnd (the correct way); if it tests open circuit, you have found Vpp1 and Gnd (pins 52 and 68 in reversed orientation).