Working on the software..

All is good on the hardware side of things. Here you see my second revision board connected to the PS3 drive connected and to a USB/IDE converter.

It's also really stable. The drive remains connected and doesn't show any sign of hardware instability. Here is Nero InfoTool, showing some of the drives capabilities.

I'm currently working on the software side of things, more to come..

Revision 0.2..

Here is a picture of the first revision:

Sadly the pinout I used for the first revision turned out to be complete bogus (never trust the internet). Although I found a second pinout on ps3devwiki I needed to be sure this was correct. So I broke the fcc connector from the 3k3y PCB and used a multimeter to follow the pinout to the JM20337 chip. Now I was able to match my own pinout to the one from the ps3devwiki, it turns out that's indeed the correct one.

So here is my second attempt. I'm still waiting for the PCB manufacturer for approval, but it's scheduled for delivery on the 11th, to be continued..

Sorry for the long delay..

Sorry for not giving you an update earlier. I've been very busy, and sorry to say not that busy with this project. In the meantime I've married, sold my wife's house and moved to a different city. And last but not least the 4th of July (honestly) my wife is expecting a baby. How many changes can one handle?

Ok, enough of my personal life, so how's the project coming along? I've shifted from opinion again and have gone back to my first idea which was to build a simple 40/60 pin converter. A brand new PCM/PATA design turned out to be too costly for the amount of PCB's I need to get build.. It turns out there are good IDE/SATA converters available that I'm currently testing:

This gives me way more options in existing HDD enclosures that I can think of. I was also wrong about the JMICRON JM20337. The bug did exist in the reference design of the earlier enclosures that were produced. The enclosures that are available nowadays do not longer have that bug as they've removed a resistor from the reference design. I still haven't decided on the IDE/USB or IDE/SATA/USB combination but it has to perform well and be of good quality. But now I can add SATA enclosures to my list of options, which is great.

So I've decided to go back to my first idea which was easy and quick to build. And today I received my first revision of the prototype I've put together:

The soldering on these prototypes will be done by a friend of mine. He has the skill to solder that small 0.5mm pitch connector by hand. More later..

dumped the LaCie eprom

I received the CH341A EEPROM Programmer today. The kit I ordered contained two PCBs, one to solder the LaCie EEPROM on and one to read/program its contents. After some (de)soldering and finding the correct software I successfully dumped the EEPROM.

The proof is in the binary dump, a short analysis shows me that LaCie isn't doing anything special here (like patching the NEC uPD720133 firmware), so we will simply replace the LaCie strings with something to our liking, update the firmware CRC and go from there..

drawing traces..

A small update.. I've been steadily drawing traces. It's going to be a 4 layer PCB, most of it based on the LaCie design. I desoldered all components from the LaCie PCB and made some high resolution photo's as a reference. Together with my multimeter I've been following the traces, here is where I'm currently at:

Look at the size of P1, that's a regular jumper used for disc ejection, just to give you an idea of the dimensions we're dealing with. Although I know where I'm heading to, it's more work than I expected. It probably also has to do with the fact that this will be my first multi-layered PCB. I'm learning so much while moving forward, I love that. Luckily I know a couple of electrical engineers who will be able to check my work. Anyway I'm not going to rush it, it needs to be done well!

finding components

Finding components is a pain! I found 'almost' all components and I'm currently working on the PCB design:

For example, I've spend over half a day (maybe due to lack of google skills?!) trying to find the PS3 Blu-Ray type power connector. You can help me out by finding the (type) name of the connector (It looks like a floppy "berg" type connector but it isn't..).

It's about quality not speed

I've been investigating several chipsets, the following companies produce good quality chipsets; Texas Instruments (TUSB6250 USB), NEC (D720133GB), Cypress (CY7C68300-56PVC) and Philips (ISP1581). In the mean time I ordered several second hand, high quality enclosures. One of those was an older type LaCie DVD burner. I opened it up to see what the PCB was made of. It turned out to contain the NEC (now Renesas) D720133GB, which is no longer in production. The PCB implementation proved to be straightforward, and looking at the NEC D720133GB datasheet and performance, we clearly have a winner here. I investigated if the chipset is still for sale, it turns out it is! Once I found a reference NEC USB/IDE implementation (LaCie clearly did a one on one copy!) I knew I was on the right track, no need to reverse engineer anything in that aspect. Since then I've been sourcing all the components, filling in the dimensions and putting a schematic together (like LaCie a one on one copy of the NEC implementation). Here is a partial screenshot of what I've been designing myself:

Although there is a small custom LaCie firmware that's stored on an EEPROM (24Cxx type). Next step will be to try to dump that using a tiny EEPROM USB burner that I've ordered, leading to no loss of quality in that aspect either. Stay tuned.