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Any use for low cost 1.8" HDD? — Parallax Forums

Any use for low cost 1.8" HDD?

RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
edited 2009-09-10 12:48 in Propeller 1
I think I could get access to a large qty of 1.8" HDDs, 20 or 40 GB.

Anybody see a use for these?· They have a flat-flex cable connection and run off 3.3V.· The interface is ATA-6...

Now that we have a FAT32 SD card driver, I'm not really sure what these would buy us, except large storage for a lot lower cost...

What do you guys think?

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Comments

  • David BDavid B Posts: 592
    edited 2009-08-25 16:03
    I think they'd have their niche.

    I had an idea once for a propeller-driven jukebox. I've got cartons of vinyl records in the garage, and I was thinking of digitizing them into WAV files, and would need quite a few gigs to store them. SD cards aren't up to that capacity yet, so at the moment, HDs are the only fast way to store that much data relatively inexpensively.

    What kind of price for one?
  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2009-08-25 16:04
    Can you post a picture of them too?
  • Mike GreenMike Green Posts: 23,101
    edited 2009-08-25 16:11
    These aren't as useful as you might think for a Propeller. The interface is a parallel one and takes a lot of I/O pins. They're also relatively power hungry since they have moving parts. Now that you can get SD cards with multi-GB, it's hard to justify using HDDs. 4GB SD cards are < $10 and 8GB SD cards are < $20. These prices are likely to continue to drop.

    It's really hard to use up even 1GB for something like a Propeller where most of what you'd record is either text files or small (<32K) programs. The way to fill up storage is pictures, sound, or movies and the Propeller really doesn't support any of those. You can get small or low resolution pictures, simple sound, and very crude moving pictures, but none of those take much storage. The Prop II is much more likely to be able to make use of GBs of attached storage, but the higher capacity SD cards will also be cheaper by then.
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-08-25 17:05
    I'm inclined to agree with Mike...· But, on the other hand I was just reading about the interface and it appears to be quite simple...

    In fact, I think one could just use an 8-bit bus and sacrafice 1/2 of the storage to save pins...· Also, the data throughput rate is quite high, ~10 MB/s, if I'm reading the Tom's Hardware review correctly...

    I also noticed that someone hacked their Asus EEE Netbook and replaced the 4 MB SSD with one of these guys (I might have to do that too!).

    I think this is the product page:
    http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=StorageSolutions/1.8-inchHardDiskDrives/MK4009GAL/MK4009GALSpecifications

    Here's an interesting note on hooking up an IDE drive to a microcontroller:
    http://www.pjrc.com/tech/8051/ide/wesley.html



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  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2009-08-25 17:32
    Hello Ray,

    I don't know if you saw my IDE controller at the UPENE show this weekend or not. It was a board to add 640K of memory and an IDE controller to an old HERO 2000 robot. That robot has an 8088 processor and it similar to an 8-bit IBM XT system but has a custom BUS. It is true that you can just ignore the upper 8-bits and still use the drive with half capacity. However if you do that you also lose the ability to query the drive stats (model #, geometry, etc) so you have to know what the drive specs are. On the H2KIDE board I added some latches to grab the upper 8-bits too. I can just do one read, then another to grab the whole 16 bit value with an 8-bit bus. You could do the same on the Prop.

    The IDE drives are cool but I think Mike suggestion about using SD cards makes more sense to use with the Prop.

    Robert
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-08-25 18:36
    I think the latch idea makes a lot of sense...

    ...If one were to share the data bus with some other device, say an LCD screen, for example, then the added pin count isn't so much...

    Ok, well apart from practicality, it might be fun to play around with anyway...

    Here's some adapters for it so you can use the drive with your PC:

    http://www.addonics.com/products/io/aaedt18ide25.asp

    Also, it appears that these are very similar to the drives you find in Ipods...

    Actually, one of these and a Protoboard (cut up a bit), might fit inside one of those 2.5" HDD USB enclosures...



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    My Prop Info&Apps: ·http://www.rayslogic.com/propeller/propeller.htm
  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2009-08-25 19:23
    Ray,

    Those adapters are a great find. I haven't seen them before and will keep that link in case I need them down the road. Thanks for posting that.

    Robert
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-08-25 22:49
    I don't actually have any yet... But, would anybody go for $5 each?

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    My Prop Info&Apps: ·http://www.rayslogic.com/propeller/propeller.htm
  • David BDavid B Posts: 592
    edited 2009-08-25 23:01
    I'd pick up a couple for that price
  • TheWizard65TheWizard65 Posts: 91
    edited 2009-08-26 00:02
    I'd buy a few at $5.00/pc, I already have a 30gb from a dead i-Pod.
  • PFloyd36069PFloyd36069 Posts: 135
    edited 2009-08-26 00:37
    id buy a few
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-08-26 00:53
    Great.

    BTW: I don't see having the time to figure out how to read a FAT32 drive... But, block mode (LBA) looks not too bad...

    But, is there any way to read data from a non-FAT formatted drive with Windows?

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    My Prop Info&Apps: ·http://www.rayslogic.com/propeller/propeller.htm
  • pgbpsupgbpsu Posts: 460
    edited 2009-08-26 01:14
    Raymay-

    Sorry I can't answer your question, but I'm using SD card in block mode with the prop in our geoPebbles and we use linux/BSD/Mac to read the cards. When inserted, the OS doesn't know what to do with the card, but once mounted, I use dd. Maybe there's something similar for Windows.

    It was nice to meet you at the Expo. Keep us posted on the touch screen version of your prop board.

    Peter aka pgbpsu
  • David BDavid B Posts: 592
    edited 2009-08-26 02:35
    I made a propeller HD interface using an 8255 like in that link of Wesley's.

    I wrote low-level spin and asm routines to read and write blocks, then just plugged in Kye's FAt32 code routines, and they worked pretty well to list the contents of FAT32 directories, open a file and list the text contents.

    But my hardware works great with some drives but not with others, and I can't figure out why, so I regularly get fed up with it and set it aside to work on other interests. But those little drives look like they'd be fun to try to get working.

    I would think that there'd be a way to get Windows to read and write raw blocks from a hard drive, but I've never done it.
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2009-08-26 04:17
    Information Technology -
    AT Attachment
    with Packet Interface - 6
    (ATA/ATAPI-6)

    www.t10.org/t13/project/d1410r3a-ATA-ATAPI-6.pdf

    Parallel ATA:
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA
  • RevAaronRevAaron Posts: 30
    edited 2009-08-26 15:00
    Just thought I'd pop in to say that I, too, would buy 5 for $5 a pop. [noparse]:)[/noparse] Thanks!
  • P!-RoP!-Ro Posts: 1,189
    edited 2009-08-26 15:05
    I'll buy a couple.

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    PG
  • dMajodMajo Posts: 855
    edited 2009-08-26 16:02
    Rayman (Virginia ... hmm) do you sale also overseas (Italy)? How much the shipping costs?

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  • RobotWorkshopRobotWorkshop Posts: 2,307
    edited 2009-08-26 16:04
    I could use a couple.
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-08-26 16:53
    dMajo: I just sent a small box to Europe with USPS International Priority for $12...

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  • nightwingnightwing Posts: 56
    edited 2009-08-26 17:34
    Wonder if a card reader feeding the USB Host controller chip then feeding a Prop would work?
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2009-08-27 00:23
    But, would anybody go for $5 each?

    3 for 5
  • mikedivmikediv Posts: 825
    edited 2009-08-27 00:36
    For 5 bucks I would buy a few just to have them heck I go to radio shack when I am really stuck and can wait for mail order and I seem to buy nothing and it comes to 30 bucks , hey I did not know that RS sold Parallax stuff its reasonably priced as well.
    Anyway yes for 5 bucks I would take 4 or 5
  • Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL)Bob Lawrence (VE1RLL) Posts: 1,720
    edited 2009-08-27 00:47
    re:
    mikediv said...
    heck I go to radio shack when I am really stuck and can wait for mail order and I seem to buy nothing and it comes to 30 bucks
    Somebody said...


    You missed out. Radio shack had "nothing" on sale last week at 50% off. turn.gif You could have saved 15 bucks. lol.gif
  • Jimmy W.Jimmy W. Posts: 112
    edited 2009-08-27 21:37
    I would buy 7 or 8 of them at that price.

    Jimmy
  • TubularTubular Posts: 4,708
    edited 2009-08-27 23:59
    I'll take 4 at $5ea... have laptops that use them

    Thanks Rayman!

    tubular
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-08-28 00:52
    Ok, I see there is some interest! Hopefully, I'll get some in a week or two... I probably should make or buy that adapter so that I can at least test basic functionalilty before selling them...

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  • Jimmy W.Jimmy W. Posts: 112
    edited 2009-09-07 22:38
    Any news?

    Jimmy
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-09-08 00:04
    Well, I have made some progress in terms of actually being able to sell stuff (something I'm still not completely convinced that I want to get into)...
    In terms of getting the drives, I heard about a week ago that my source was going to see what kind of testing, if any, was done on these drives...
    If no testing was done, I may have to rig up some kind of test fixture to at least make sure they work before selling them (just for my conscience!)
    But, I have high confidence that the majority of them will work.


    But, I still don't know for sure if I'm getting any yet, sorry.· I may have to risk bugging my source about it soon...

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    Post Edited (Rayman) : 9/8/2009 12:14:41 AM GMT
  • RaymanRayman Posts: 14,849
    edited 2009-09-10 12:48
    I hope to get some drives soon...

    I found a cheap little USB enclosure for them:

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817707128

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