Powerbook compact flash drive

posted Dec 10th 2005 11:00am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: macs hacks

powerbook

This Powerbook 150 was purchased as a simple media reader. Once the hard drive failed the owner decided to replace it with a compact flash card since IDE adapters were available. There was a problem: the ATA device driver would probe the device and then immediately shutdown because the “identify device” bit wasn’t the expected value. The device driver had been written before more recent changes to the ATA spec. Greg solved the problem by constructing a daughter card that plugs into the adapter board’s 40-pin header and then flips the identifying bit when the device is initially probed.

[thanks iamdigitalman]

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Comments [27]

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how many people are going to use this????

Posted at 12:42 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by CYRIX

I would… dude thats awesome, but is there a way to out multiple cards in there, kinda like a raid of multiple Compact Flash cards for more space?

Posted at 12:47 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by BitSlash

Bitslash, I suppose that you could do it becasue the computer sees the flash card just like any other IDE device. I’m not sure how the ATA RAID controller would handle it though.

Posted at 1:06 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by billytheimpaler

Cool hack. I was actually thinking of doing this with a sony picturebook I have. So did he have trouble because a powerbook 150 is kinda old? I’m assuming on a more modern machine the adapter would just work…

Posted at 1:18 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by collin

This is an insane hack! With advancements like this, native-booting of 68k macs must surely be around the corner!

Posted at 1:26 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by karpet

cyric, it has little to do with how many people will benefit. however, it has *EVERYTHING* to do with clever, non-obvious approaches to solving a problem. regardless of the application, regardless of who or how many may benefit, such an achievement is always admirable.

to all of those who disdain the posted hack of the day, please refrain from belittling comments. not a hack you say? already know if it? why, then, what an excellent opportunity! share your knowledge with others for whom such a hack is neither obvious or known. a negative atmosphere will never foster anything .

at any rate, this was a very very nice job, and yet more proof that our old hardware still has a breath of life in it. my old powerbooks might welcome such a resurrection. (theyre also indestructible…i used one as an ssh frontend to a router’s console port for several years without a single restart. thank you, debian).

Posted at 1:58 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by Steve

Pretty slick! At first blush, it looks like it might fit into a GAL22V10. If not, it might be doable with the GAL and a flip-flop. That reduces the size and wiring complexity, and if he were to lay out a PCB, that would reduce the assembly effort.

Posted at 2:12 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by jc

Great work! now here’s your next challenge: do the opposite. i would LOVE a diy way to use a regular ata drive to a cf-enabled device, particularly my pocketPC…

Posted at 2:34 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by kryten007

now if only we could do this with some of those 2gig flash cards , i cant wait until we have flash harddrives!

Posted at 2:40 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by digitallysick

Coyote Linux website offers some adapters

http://www.coyotelinux.com/store/index.php?ByCategory=4

Posted at 3:37 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by bluestar

nice! this can also be useable for those pictureframe-hacks I guess, as I, for one, wouldn’t like an old spinning HD hanging on my wall

Posted at 3:55 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by markie

CF cards are not designed for this kind of operation, they have a low write life (that is, they can only take a certain number of writes before they fail). When used as a OS drive it is *essential* that the OS is configured properly to minimise writing to the CF card.

Posted at 4:04 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by mr dan

Well I have a powerbook 1400 G3 and I’m thinking about adding a compact flash card to boot off of and add some virtual memory.
Plus I got a 512MB compact flash card for only $15AR.

Posted at 4:05 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by ez

yeah, i found this and was thinking of doing it to my PB100, only use it IN ADDITION to the HD. use it to boot off of, like ez said. also, using it as VM might work as well. However, I dont wanna mess around with my beautiful PB100. maybe I should pick up a PB150 on ebay, as they are going for cheap.

of course, I also have a wallstreet on the way, the one without the cache. I could try to put a CF card in it and use it as a cache. if I could get a smaller card, imagine instead of a 512kb cache, try 32mb!! or, wouldnt that work?

-digital

Posted at 9:11 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by iamdigitalman

best suggestion for getting adapters (ide-to-cf, ide-to-laptop-ide, etc) is ebay. price via coyote linux? $60 to $80 US. ebay? $0.99.

Posted at 9:52 pm on Dec 10th, 2005 by Steve

Looking at the schematic, I’m wondering why the designer didn’t just use OR gates instead of using an inverter after every NOR. He could have saved a chip.

Posted at 2:07 am on Dec 11th, 2005 by david

Love the hack.

Good detective work on his part with disassembling the code and finding the problem! I would not have opted for the logic chips but a CPLD like a XC9536 but thats me ;-).

Great stuff.

Posted at 12:53 pm on Dec 11th, 2005 by BoomBox

Ok peeps i’m new here…..well been in the shadows for some time. Now i have to come out of the hack shadows, coz i’m a newbie. I have a Ricoh g1200s….could you run an alternative OS with a pcmcia adapter and flash card? Like a removable multi-boot system? Would you have to do the same thing here that jam did. Would like to run a linux distro.

Posted at 3:02 pm on Dec 11th, 2005 by Top-e5

By the way excellent idea.

Posted at 3:11 pm on Dec 11th, 2005 by Top-e5

Very nice

Posted at 10:00 pm on Dec 11th, 2005 by anonymous Gort

I’ve got a PB100 in the closet, damn keys are too loud..only use for it I ever found was word processing, and some people have used it as MIDI STMP clock…I don’t think the battery keeps a charge. Interesting hack though…

Posted at 3:20 am on Dec 12th, 2005 by mike

I like this a lot - I didn’t think people built circuits out of discrete logic any more, and it hadn’t occured to me to put a CF card in a laptop as a means of building a silent PC.

Posted at 10:06 am on Dec 12th, 2005 by Peter clay

That’s pretty awesome. Bring on the 68K hacks!

Posted at 11:19 am on Dec 12th, 2005 by ravuya

You know, for IF, a Palm OS device is a much better bet, especially an old one with a KB, maybe a treo 100/300 or something, seeing as there have been IF engines since POS 3.0 or something like that.

Excellent hack though.

Posted at 5:19 pm on Dec 13th, 2005 by Suntiger

sweet hack! have a pb100 as well as a pb160, wondering if this will work on scsi as well.

Posted at 6:56 pm on Dec 15th, 2005 by jovan

I love this hack, I already thought it would be neat to do similar things to other notebooks… way to go man! Really neat.

Posted at 6:49 am on Dec 20th, 2005 by nils

All current publicly available Flash Drives have an extreme limitation when it comes to writing data. They ‘wear-out’ after a relatively small amount of block writes. Using a flash card in this manner (as a home for the OS) means it will most likely have a lot of write operations performed on the flash drive. Most newer drives try to combat this by distributing data writes as evenly and reasonable as they can. So for all of you out there who think “I can get replace my HD”: you may have be in for a big suprise shortly down the road. VERY nice project nonetheless.

Posted at 5:18 pm on Dec 21st, 2005 by Stuart

Powerbook compact flash drive

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