I wrote my IDE story here
http://rayer.g6.cz/hardware/retropc2.htm#XTIDE
you can use google translator or so...

Marco wrote on 2024-02-14, 20:40:

Ah ok. Thanks a lot

I got a chance to look inside a Transcend PSD330 32GB. It had a Silicon Motion SM2236G Compact Flash controller.

https://static6.arrow.com/aropdfconversion/a5 … lixwtnrmu16.pdf

The SM2236 is the world’s highest performance and the lowest power consumption CompactFlash card controller. Fully compliant with CFA 6.0, the controller supports UDMA transfer on true-IDE and PCMCIA modes, especially designed for professional DSLR. The SM2236’s ECC can support most major NAND flash vendor’s new generation MLC/SLC NAND and perform global wear-leveling to evenly distribute the write and erase counts to each block. Incorporating the advanced ECC and global wear-leveling algorithm, the SM2236 can operate with various NAND flash memories/process geometries and maximize the life expectancy of CompactFlash card.

Applications

• CompactFlash Card
• PATA Solid State Disk
• High-Speed NAND Storage

Key Features

• Host interface
  * Compliant with CFA Specification v6.0
  * Supports IDE PIO modes 0~6 and UDMA modes 0~7
  * Supports PCMCIA UDMA modes 0~6
  * Supports Multi-word DMA modes 0~4
• Flash interface and firmware
  * Quad channel: 4 channels and 8 chip enable(CE) pins per channel
  * Supports 2/4/8 KB per page
  * Supports 2-plane and interleave to optimize performance
  * Enhanced configurable BCH ECC engine
  * Global wear-leveling algorithm to effectively extend the product life expectancy
  * In-System Programming (ISP) provides flexibility for new Flash and device compatibility support

Thanks. What’s your take away? It states that it supports PIO modes etc thats why I was taking it into consideration.
Do you want to say that this drive is more than ssd-in-the-box-converter?

Marco wrote on 2024-02-17, 22:32:

Thanks. What’s your take away? It states that it supports PIO modes etc thats why I was taking it into consideration.
Do you want to say that this drive is more than ssd-in-the-box-converter?

What I found is:

1. it does not have a Sata device inside.
2. it is a high end CF inside
3. since the controller fully supports CF 6.0, there's a good chance that it could support TRIM, ATA-8, UDMA-7

Any thoughts as to why sata CD rom might not be working properly over a dual port ide to sata adapter that plugs into the motherboard. (Pentium era motherboard) tried this once, no longer set up but it didn’t work.

Sphere478 wrote on 2024-02-18, 02:48:

Any thoughts as to why sata CD rom might not be working properly over a dual port ide to sata adapter that plugs into the motherboard. (Pentium era motherboard) tried this once, no longer set up but it didn’t work.

Whats the date on the drive? If it is older than 2007, you might have one of those atapi devices that’s natively pata with a built in bridge. In that case, good luck trying to run in through two bridges.

If it is a native sata drive, try using the bridge and atapi device on a newer controller to see if the bridge talks to the drive or try replacing the atapi device with a hard drive to see if the bridge talks to the controller.

Dear all,

Is the pcb layout for the IOCS16# generator circuit public available so that I can also provide it to a „pcb-maker“?

Dear Forum members,

Thanks for sharing again these ideas.

I ordered that PCB as well and connected it. See pictures. I connected / soldered all pin holes with the I/o controller pins.

The board seems to work as it will identify now my last gen PATA drive which was before only recognized as 125mb device.

Unfortunately system is not stable, hangs, identified capacity differs etc. maximum I could reach is my dos Boot menu. Anyway within my XTIDE boot menu HDD Name is always detected correctly and capacity most of the times. Again - if I play long enough within the XTIDE boot menu it will also hang there after a while.

PS: interestingly my system did a full BIOS reset when I put the modified card in my system in first place.

Setup:
- system 1. see signature
- Acer m4 HDD / I/O chipset
- 16Mhz ISA but also tested with 10MHz
- Single device mode.
- XTIDE bios latest version.

Sata devices won’t be recognized at all but this seems to be related to my adapter as it won’t recognize the devices also without the pcb connected. Strange as this worked before.

Regards

I found some remarks that an non XT systems to just ground the iocs16 pin to always enable 16bit transfers. This would avoid errors that occurred for me on soldering / IC speed/ etc.

What do you think?

Regards

RayeR wrote on 2022-12-13, 15:39:

Hi,
I succeed to make a simple IOCS16# decoder using 2 log. gates IOs 7432 and 7403 (simple grounding of IOCS16# is no go as only data register requires 16-bit access and other regs. needs 8-bit). Now the SSD is identified properly and works fine on that ancient 386 with XTIDE BIOS. I plan to make some compact PCB with SMD parts that could be “glued” to backside of old IDE controller 40-pin header. Thanks to rasz_pl for valued posts helping to solve this puzzle.
Here are some photo and schematic diagram of decoder:

I know I'm a few years late to the conversation, but I've spent too much time thinking about it to not share. This solution seems fine, but I kept wondering if it there was a more "elegant" way to do it, with a single IC. I spent a lot of time trying to arrange individual logic gates to accomplish it similarly to RayeR's idea, but later I realized that the signal names correspond almost perfectly to the inputs of a 74x138 address decoder. It makes me wonder if maybe the earliest IDE drives were designed with this chip (or the similar 74x139).

So I think a design like this would work well:

The diode is necessary to prevent the line from being pulled high while other devices are using it, since 74x138 doesn't have open collector outputs. I think a schottky would be a good choice. The specific 74x138 variant is important, because of supply voltage and drive current. ATA-2 specifies a minimum 12ma sink current, but I've seen mentions of 300 ohm IOCS16 pull-ups on some ISA boards, so sinking 17ma might be required in rare cases. The 74AC138 or 74ACT138 might be good choices.

I haven't actually tested this, since I don't currently own an ISA bus PC. I only researched the idea because I was thinking of designing it into another project, but for various reasons I probably won't.