USB to IDE cable creation

[Wraithan]

I have been googling around for this... the thread about the multiple PSUs had me thinking. I have a 2 spare harddrives since my desktop motherboard fried itself, and I have an old PSU I could wire to power them, and I am sure I can scrounch up or make a power switch. The problem comes with trying to hook these harddrives up to my laptop. I don't want to pay for the IDE to USB cables, but I can't seem to find a guide on creating them on the net. I have made cables before (crossover, XBox controller to USB, NES/SNES to serial) but I don't know a lot about the hardware workings... and prefer to follow a guide.

If anyone knows of a decent one, I would love to try it.

[SMurf]

You couldn't do it with a "pure" cable. You'd need an IDE controller, a USB device controller and some logic to make them work together. So really you'd be making a small board and attaching cables to it.

Dunno if you can get any free designs...

[Wraithan]

Looks like i might as well pick up IDE -> USB Enclosures, cost a tiny bit more, but I would have everything I need to make the cables and hook up the PSU.

[GanglyLamb]

If you want to create one from scratch then you need everything SMurf said. Even if you would have the layout on how everything should connect, you would still need the assembly for the µControllers that convert the data from all the IDE wires to the USB wires.

Needless to say this could be a project on its own ( which I was thinking of doing some time ago since I programmed a low speed USB µController back then ).

And yes it would be better to just take a IDE to usb enclosure, its not the cost of the raw materials that are high but the time you'll spend writing assembly and debugging the whole thing.

[Wraithan]

Yeah, my brother has a enclosure that I hadn't really looked at before... I am probably going to go with one of those, the next problem is trying to mod it accept a mulex connector to run off of, as it is those have to be plugged into the wall, I am going to do a couple tests to see if the IDE->USB card that is in there is powered off the wall or off the USB connector. I really hope it is the USB connector but I think it is off the wall by the looks of things.

I will let you guys know how things go.

[RobR]

http://www.cypress.com/portal/server...rpn=CY7C68300C

[Wraithan]

Way to much cost for poor little me heh. This isn't meant to be a portable solution, more just an extra space solution for my laptop with its teeny tiny 24gig hdd.

[RobR]

Way to much cost for poor little me heh. This isn't meant to be a portable solution, more just an extra space solution for my laptop with its teeny tiny 24gig hdd.

Huh? $4.75 is too expensive?

(Hint. You can always ask Cypress for free samples )

[Wraithan]

Hmm, I will look more into it, really i just took the part numbers and checked the sites they have up as sites to buy from and saw over $100 a couple times heh.

I will ask the head programer at work, he fiddles with a lot of stuff like this... This looks pretty promising though, thanks for the link RobR

[GanglyLamb]

Maybe the µcontroller doesnt cost much, its the development tools that will cost alot. I had the same issues when developing an usb device using a cypress controller.

The µcontroller does not cost that much, but you should really consider using a demo board if you want to start developing for some kind of microController ( unless you have a simulator that will show you what happens when you execute your code.

Maybe there is better support from cypress on these newer µControllers ( the one I used was a low speed usb controller - OTP and if I recall correctly it was one of the first usb µcontrollers out there ... ).

And there was no simulator so it was like this:
1. write assembly
2. load assembly in µController
3. check if it works
4. if not go to step 1 and replace the microcontroller with a new one since its OTP.

I sure crashed my computer alot of the times and rendered a whole lot of µControllers useless .