Well the SSD has arrived. It seems like typical cheap drive from all appearances. Has a full blown series number, bar and everything. Just need to order a AC adapter for it and we will see

ODwilly wrote on 2024-12-25, 03:28:

Well the SSD has arrived. It seems like typical cheap drive from all appearances. Has a full blown series number, bar and everything. Just need to order a AC adapter for it and we will see

Open it up and post pics please. I am curious about the controller and the chip and whether it has cache.

I am willing to bet it is a basic 44pin to mSATA bridge inside (probably a jmicron chip) with a regular mSATA ssd.

There seems to be a load of these plastic SSD cases and included mSATA ssds flooding eBay and they all seem to be using printed labels to make them look more genuine.

The way you can tell is that the mSATA mounting post holes are in exactly the same position as the unbranded mSATA laptop adapters.

Not that there is anything wrong with them - but I just tend to get the unbranded adapters and then buy the size of mSATA ssd I want (128gb drives are peanuts these days, so I tend to get them for most retro/FAT32 use). All the examples I tried have worked nicely with Ontrack drive overlay as well, so easy to use the full capacity.

The “44pin pata ssd” devices I’ve seen have all fallen into two groups:

1) the less common transcend branded devices that put a high end Compact Flash controller on a custom pcb with the 44 pin connector. These perform pretty well because they interleave their storage over 4 or 8 flash chips, compared to the 1 or 2 chips commonly found in a CF or DOM. Gives them some bandwidth headroom over most CF or DOM devices.

2) more commonly you get a 2.5” shell that contains a jmicron bridge attached to either an msata or m2 sata device. Can perform very well on newer systems but come with the jmicron difficulties if you try to use early DMA modes that were common on late socket 3 through early socket 7 systems.

I’d be really interested if anyone finds something different.

douglar wrote on 2024-12-27, 21:19:

The “44pin pata ssd” devices I’ve seen have all fallen into two groups: […]
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The “44pin pata ssd” devices I’ve seen have all fallen into two groups:

1) the less common transcend branded devices that put a high end Compact Flash controller on a custom pcb with the 44 pin connector. These perform pretty well because they interleave their storage over 4 or 8 flash chips, compared to the 1 or 2 chips commonly found in a CF or DOM. Gives them some bandwidth headroom over most CF or DOM devices.

2) more commonly you get a 2.5” shell that contains a jmicron bridge attached to either an msata or m2 sata device. Can perform very well on newer systems but come with the jmicron difficulties if you try to use early DMA modes that were common on late socket 3 through early socket 7 systems.

I’d be really interested if anyone finds something different.

There is a third type of drive which uses an Silicon Motion controller to provide native IDE support.

mockingbird wrote on 2024-12-31, 11:26:

There is a third type of drive which uses an Silicon Motion controller to provide native IDE support.

The Silicon Motion SM2236G chip that is in my Transcend PSD330 32GB pata ssd is the same flash controller that you might find in a high quality Compact Flash or 40 pin DOM except the 2.5” pcb has pads for 2,4, or 8 flash chips. Mine has 4 chips for 32gb. That’s more than you would find in a typical type I CF or DOM that usually only have 1,2 or 4 flash chips. But still, the Silicon Motion pata SSD is still essentially the same as a CF or a DOM in a different outfit.

If you double the flash chips, in theory that means double the peak throughput, everything else being equal. My expectations for a good pata ssd are that 1 flash chip devices get about 16MB/s, 2 chip devices should get about 32MB/s, etc. If you are using a computer with an ATA-4 controller, you are not likely to see much improvement going from a 2 chp to a 4 chip device. In practice, I’d expect ATA-6 limits to start to cause some resistance before you hit the full speed of the 8 chip config, but that all depends on your pc controller, the flash chips, drive firmware,etc.

ps- Older (< 2006) and off brand devices often have slower flash and slower controllers and under perform that 16MB/s per chip mark.

PPS- heres a tear down of a silicon motion CF: http://flash-extractor.com/library/SM/SM2236/ … c_48_00_26__4x2

PPPs - sorry about all the edits

douglar wrote on 2025-01-01, 14:03:

<snip> But still, the Silicon Motion pata SSD is still essentially the same as a CF or a DOM in a different outfit. <snip> If y […]
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<snip>
But still, the Silicon Motion pata SSD is still essentially the same as a CF or a DOM in a different outfit.
<snip>
If you are using a computer with an ATA-4 controller, you are not likely to see much improvement going from a 2 chp to a 4 chip device. In practice, I’d expect ATA-6 limits to start to cause some resistance before you hit the full speed of the 8 chip config, but that all depends on your pc controller, the flash chips, drive firmware,etc.

See here.

I can't remember exactly, but I think his PCB is public... The parts are still readily available (SMI chip and NAND flash) so it should be possible to manufacture a new one if you're so inclined to do. XBENCH shows him hitting close to UDMA5 speeds, which is darn good if you ask me.

Probably the best solution if you don't want to use a bridge chip adapter.

mockingbird wrote on 2025-01-01, 19:54:

See here.

I can't remember exactly, but I think his PCB is public... The parts are still readily available (SMI chip and NAND flash) so it should be possible to manufacture a new one if you're so inclined to do. XBENCH shows him hitting close to UDMA5 speeds, which is darn good if you ask me.

Probably the best solution if you don't want to use a bridge chip adapter.

So do you think this behaves differently than a compact flash based on the same silicon motion controller that has 4 flash chips?

douglar wrote on 2025-01-01, 20:57:

So do you think this behaves differently than a compact flash based on the same silicon motion controller that has 4 flash chips?

Honestly, I know nothing about CF... I've never seen one taken apart and I had no idea how they worked until you told me... I need to find that PCB for his project, I'm almost certain he offered it once, I probably have it on one of my drives.

EDIT: Yea, here it is. Anyone interested?

mockingbird wrote on 2025-01-01, 21:46:

Honestly, I know nothing about CF... I've never seen one taken apart and I had no idea how they worked until you told me... I need to find that PCB for his project, I'm almost certain he offered it once, I probably have it on one of my drives.

EDIT: Yea, here it is. Anyone interested?

Cool project. No small amount of work there. I enjoyed reading about how to program the controller outside of ATA mode to work with different flash chips using USB & MBtool. But in my opinion, he’s made an oversized compact flash with 6 fewer pins and no PCMCIA or PCCard functionality.

Here are more pictures of CF guts that use the Silicon Motion controller if you want to compare how similar they are: http://flash-extractor.com/library/SM/SM2236/

douglar wrote on 2025-01-02, 00:53:

Here are more pictures of CF guts that use the Silicon Motion controller if you want to compare how similar they are: http://flash-extractor.com/library/SM/SM2236/

Cool, you're right... Proper SSDs with a cache should give much better performance for random write, do you agree?