Re: Anyone Know how to do this? Internal IDE drive to Ext. U
Woohhh! This is cool!
Humm ok, it's probably feasible to do such a device, but the problem is not much the hardware than the firmware/software.
First, there's probably a microcontroler inside that device, that have firmware that implement USB stack and convertion to IDE protocol.
The big problem is on the PC side. You see, even though the device connect to an IDE drive, the PC probably doesn't see an IDE interface at all. So, it's not just a matter of doing simple 'convertion' between IDE and USB. A complete device driver must be written on the PC to communicate with the device, and to present itself to Windows as a disk device (or at least, as an IDE device, but this still need writing complete driver). And some firmware must be written too on the interface, as said.
Ok, there are some USB modules that you can start with, like the FTDI modules. Those are small USB modules, that have parallel IO pins plus control lines on one side, and USB connector on the other side. And FTDI web site give the drivers for this module. On the PC side, you have the choice of making that USB module look like a fast serial port, or have a library of functions to communicate to the module. It's simple as calling a byte-write function, and the module output 8 bits of data. Put 8 bits of data on the module, and get the result on the PC with a byte-read function. The module and driver take care of the USB stack details. The only disadvantage, it's USB-1 (not USB-2). It can give you up to 1MByte/sec transfer.