PCMCIA cdrom controller, Harddrive ??

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kyndal

Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 62

02 Oct 2003 12:16 PCMCIA cdrom controller, Harddrive ??

Im the "lucky" owner of an old ARCHOS 24x Pcmcia cdrom.
and last night i took it apart (to bored Smile

) and yes, as expected it was a
100% standard ATAPI Drive..
And Clever as i can be. i thought What would stop me from
hacking it to do for a harddrive insted!

there is no "intelligence" in the PCB inside the cdrom case,
so alle conversion needed is made in the pcmcia card.

Does any of you know about PCMCIA - IDE controllers / adapters?
i know that CF cards are pcmcia compatible, but aparently they run as "memorycard" when in pcmca?

Is it posible to more or les directly hook up a harddrive to pcmcia?
Pinouts of this conversion?

Any input??

/Kyndal

robotman

Joined: 11 Jan 2002
Posts: 74

02 Oct 2003 15:11 Re: PCMCIA cdrom controller, Harddrive ??

PCMCIA is just an extention of the PC's ISA bus. Almost all of the timing is the same. In the case of a PCI adapter, it performs a bridging function.

As for the controller, it is a simple IDE interface inside the PCMCIA card. It includes a few extra goodies for PCMCIA support (config memory, power sequencing, etc), but in the end, it usually maps into one of the four IDE addresses (1F0, 1E0, ....).

As for CF cards, they DO NOT map into a memorycard. It uses I/O space just like the IDE interfaces do. If fact, the address space is limited (A10 or A15 I think) so that the memory window would be really small. A CF card also has a mode to directly look like a IDE/ATAPI harddrive (no config space needed).

As for the hookup, I think that it might be possible. The big problem is the intialization of the PCMCIA controller on the PC side (I am making an assumption here). A PCMCIA controller is just a bridge/mapper to open memory windows in the PC space into the PCMCIA card space. Most controller (at least the older ones) were Intel SL365 (??) compatible.

Hope this helps..

kyndal

Joined: 16 Feb 2003
Posts: 62

02 Oct 2003 15:43 Re: PCMCIA cdrom controller, Harddrive ??

Yes..
The pcmcia card only contains a AT27C010 memory chip, and a 74HC02
and the rest is almost direvtly passed to the connector (som resistors) pull up/down i suppose!.

The card is initiallized by the PC, as a ATAPI controller.
so i guess it is possible
The thing i need now, is probally just some pinout on how to hook the connector to the harddrive?

/Kyndal