Ide Harddrive Controller


randomdude

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Jan 24, 2006
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Cross-posted from DCemu where I didn't get much response...

Hi guys. I'm new to this board, so go easy on me.

Anyway, I've got me a shiny new gp2x, and I'm feeling a bit limited by the amount of storage space I have availiable. I'm thinking of building an MMC-slot to IDE converter, and I was wondering if theres any commercial possibility for it - who would be interested in one? It'd (probably) be in a case to take a laptop style 2.5" HD, or maybe the slim ones as used in the ipod.

It'd take a fair chunk of time to make, and may well not come to fruition at all - but I think it'd be really nice to plop a 60Gb drive on the thing. I can't see the firmware being bug-free enough to cope with such an extreme situation - but I figure its GPL'ed, so I can bugfix it (brainpower permitting).

The only potential problem I can see is power usage - but I figure that if I need to, I can attatch a battery to it. As long as its small enough to fit in my pocket, I think it'll be good for flights/etc.. full MAME romset and a few DVDs.. Yeah, I couldget used to that

So yeah - Any comments? Just as a rough idea, how many people would (possibly)be interested?

Ta muchly - Randomdude the Gamesfairy.
 
Your problem is not so much hooking the drive up ( which would still be hard )

It is powering a hard drive . THe batteries in the GP2X would get drained to fast if you pulled off them ( I dont even know if they have the voltage )

And adding your own battery pack would make it too big .
 
Your problem is not so much hooking the drive up ( which would still be hard )

It is powering a hard drive . THe batteries in the GP2X would get drained to fast if you pulled off them ( I dont even know if they have the voltage )

And adding your own battery pack would make it too big .

I can do it, man.. trust in the might of the Randomdude ;) I'm more posting for would-people-like-it purposes.
 
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It's possible e.g. strap an ipod on the back and hook it up somehow using ipod HD, and battery.

But is it worth it? I think I would just take my laptop and a couple of SD cards.

Nice idea though.

My mod desire :

I wouild like to mod my TV out to add USB cable and then support for a USB gamepad or keyboard => many computer and game systems in my pocket capable of hooking up to a big screen.
 
Oh hey, randomdude. :) I need to talk to you about that SD adaptor again sometime soon.

I think having a hard drive available would be fairly useful for mass storage (considering there are CF/IDE bridges available), and even if it is impractical it'd be fun to make.
 
I could see some kind of SD to CompactFlash adapter and then using a CF microdrive, that might be more feasible, since they have several gig CF microdrives out and they are relatively cheap. Might be something to look at, there are adapters between all kinds of different flash formats.
 
for gp2x its a way to complicated aproach as the same could be handled over usb host where you would only need a inexpensive adapter cable and software, but maybe you should look in digitel cameras as a target, or even game consoles (gamecube for example).
 
I could see some kind of SD to CompactFlash adapter and then using a CF microdrive, that might be more feasible, since they have several gig CF microdrives out and they are relatively cheap. Might be something to look at, there are adapters between all kinds of different flash formats.

Ever seen that 4-in-one for the PSP? All we'd have to do is change the plug thing to an SDIO plug and then all we'd need would be drivers for it. ^_^
 
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or we could just build an interface that pretended it was a xGb SD card :) It true that GPH's drivers probably wouldn't work with it, but then again they don't with official SD cards that well either ;) Maybe when Open2X gets off the ground, we can use Rob's SD routines, and then there should be no problem.
 
Maybe. ;) All I know is that as soon as I can use CF cards, I'm getting a 16 Gig or somesuch. ^_^

Also, anyone know any way we could give the GP2X MORE RAM? or is that not possible?
 
Maybe. ;) All I know is that as soon as I can use CF cards, I'm getting a 16 Gig or somesuch. ^_^

Also, anyone know any way we could give the GP2X MORE RAM? or is that not possible?

Amayby somwhow making a swap file/partition to a SD or the NAND mem, altho NAND would have too litle space. (when im going to get my gp2x im going to replace the nand inside and make a 128mb swap in it, then i could have my mp3's and some movies at the nand while games at SD :D )
 
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SD is too slow for RAM. And I THINK the same thing can be said for NAND (if you're talking about my RAM question that is)
 
Game Park used new NAND that supposedly has in the range of a million read/write cycles.
 
Ok, that's all fine and well. But does anyone know how hard it would be to INSTALL extra RAM?

People are doing it on the XBOX, but I'm not too sure of the details involved in it. It is, however, a Quad flat package, and it's SMD, and you'll have to use solder paste and a heat gun. The difficulty for this is pretty high, even desoldering the originals would be a bitch.

Here's how to do it though.

SMD Soldering Guide by Infidigm
 
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It's a 54pin TSOP, and the manufacturer doesn't make them any larger capacity. Samsung does, but pind 15 and 39 aren't the same from what I can tell. If they're compatible, we should be able to hack it up and go to 128MB.

Anybody wanna give it a try?
 
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