I have a 2.5 inch (notebook) to 3.5 inch (desktop) IDE hard drive cable adapter (44 pin female to 40 pin male) The only problem I have is that the female socket that goes to the 2.5" notebook drive has 44 pin holes and I can't figure which way it connects to the drive (there is no missing slot like on most IDE ribbon cables) the cionnector can go either way and I'm sure that the 5 volts from the wrong locations will do no good. the PC board is numbered 1 - 43 on 1 row and 2 - 44 on the other row on the female adapter I'm trying to figure out which row should have the missing slot to match the Hard drive. Thanks

Actually connecting it the wrong way round wont do any harm - it just won't work. There should be a red stripe down one side of the cable. That goes to pin 1. You just need to identify pin 1 on the drive. Stuart

no red stripe on the cable (no cable either) just a cheap PC board with both 44 & 40 pin sockets plus 2 wires and plug for power supply If I could find out which pins on a laptop hard drive receive the power from the cable, I could use my multimeter and test the sockets on the adapter and be able to figure out which way to connect.

Ok so I used a different search phrase and found a few links. Here is a good link that has Pin-outs for just about any electronic component. http://www.technick.net/public/code/pinouts.php So my answer is pin 20 is the missing pin and pin 41 & 42 have 5v So, row marked 2 - 44(even pins) will mate with the 20 pin(missing slot/pin).

Here's how my adaptor looks: Holding the laptop drive so that the pins ar toward you, and the bottome of the drive down (circuit board side down) On my drives, there is the main connector, and a group of jumper pins isolated with a space off to the right side. Now, plug in the adaptor, this should result in the power leads bien on the left, again, with the isolated "jumper" pins off to the far right. On my adaptor, the red POS lead is on the bottom. Pin 1 for the IDE ribbon is on the far right, being marked by a small paint dot on the adaptor.