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| PROJECTS OK so the sony PSP is pretty cool, but it has one major fault, storage is limited, (and expensive) a few products have been released that convert SONY MS PRO DUO to CompactFLash/microdrive, as the latter comes in much larger capacities and at a huge price advantage. This got me thinking as i knew CF and IDE/ATA are VERY similar. Really only the connector is different, otherwise they are very compatible with each other (and with PCMCIA/PCCARD) so i decided to try and get an IDE device working through the CF card reader on my computer. Guess what? it worked first go!. I got one of those el cheapo CF to IDE converters (you know the ones that let you boot from a CF card) and an old 16mb CF card (for its connector) and wired up a frankenstien type converter:
plugged in a 60GB Seagate HDD i have around for backups and such and used an old dell ATX PSU for power:
Booted up my computer, plugged the CF adapter in, and powerd up the HDD, straigh away i realised it hit gold, as an explorer window popped up showing the contents of the Drive! Properties manager confirmed for me that the Disk infact had been mounted as a removeable drive and showed up with its correct size and so on
LIMITATIONS: SO far it doesnt like hot swapping, no matter what ive tried it just wont work, only when you reeboot the computer, plug in the adapter and THEN power up the drive will it work . windows and my bios "pauses" if the adapter is plugged in but not powered (just like with a dodgy HDD). im going to run some tests with an old 3gb hitachi drive to see if file tranfers work out OK (im using this drive because i dont want to end up killing my backup drive). It wouldnt be very hard at all to now go from 3.5" IDE to 2.5" IDE (or even to a PCCARD slot to use 5-60GB 1.8" drives). ONLY problem with that is that the PSP only sees volumes of up to 4GB (SONY's doing that is) once the firmware is changed so that it will see larger volumes this will all have been worthwhile. |
