SD SDHC Memory Card Converter TF IDE 3.5 40 Pin Male IDE Hard Disk Drive Adapter ?

[chacal231077]

Hi!

I would like to know if it can work instead of a game HDD version

But how do you configure it in Cable Select mode ?

Thank you

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003007853135.html?spm=a2g0o.cart.0.0.446638daHxcUmg&mp=1

 

[nem]

There's no cable select.

I had no idea these are actually half decent? Performance can apparently be better than with a CF when writing small files.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yn9vwOf19XE&t=173s

Video review by Phil's Computer Lab from six years ago.

 

[doccaz]

Interesting. I got the exact same adapter (except the silkscreen is white). I trying recording two different HDD images (Time Crisis 4 and Cobra: The Arcade) on a 128GB card and attached it to my System 256. Nothing. The power and card detect LEDs light up, but not the activity LED.

I tested the card on an old PC (with another boot image, of course), and it worked fine there.

You asked about setting it as cable select. In theory, this should be detected as Master. You can force a cable select by cutting a pin off the cable for the *second* connector (it was pin 28 IIRC). But anyway, I don't know if it'd make a difference for System 256. The original DVD-ROM is physically set to Master via jumper, and works.
(edit: answering to myself -- it doesn't. I changed the jumper on the DVD-ROM to cable select and it still boots as Master. System 256 still loads from it just fine)

I researched this card ("SINTECHI") and found a nice article about it (https://goughlui.com/2019/02/03/tested-generic-sintechi-fc1307a-based-sd-to-ide-adapter-sd35vc0/). The author came to the conclusion that there isn't much to do or modify it. He even dumped the firmware, but couldn't do much with it. I looked the chipset up, and the datasheet for the FC1307A chipset is virtually impossible to find. This chip is from around 2006-2007. All I could find was the datasheet for the earlier model of this chipset (FC1306T), which did the same as this one, but with older flash formats (like Smartmedia and Memory Stick). From what I could gather, there's absolutely nothing to configure on that one, it's all hard-coded in the firmware. And I guess FC1307A will be the same.
So unfortunately, this card does not work at all with System 256. What would make it work? No idea, as there doesn't seem to be any other form of debugging available for it (or is there?).

 

[jammajunk]

i wish there was a solution to replace the old ide mecanical drives with something more recent like a ssd or something else.. I'm kinda stressed about my gundan vs gundam next drive

 

[doccaz]

I ordered one of the cheap SATA-to-IDE adapters and I'll test it with an SSD with the System256 when it arrives. The SD one would be a lot more practical though. If it worked, I could add an SD flat cable extension and mount it outside the case. Swapping "hard disks" would be very easy...
There's also the hope that one of the current optical disc emulators will do HDDs at one point at a not-so-expensive price.

This one does HDD already: https://3do.dev/en-br/products/ide-emulator-batch1

 

[jammajunk]

keep us updated!

 

[doccaz]

Okay, new chapter... I ordered two cheap adapters from AliExpress.

SInce I had everything dismantled while I was painting the case (see the make-over thread in the forum), I decided to test these out.

1. an SD-to-CF adapter, plugged it into a CF-to-IDE adapter

I dd'ed the Cobra Arcade image to the 128GB SD, added a molex adapter cable... wrote the corresponding dongle to my SYS2X6 and booted it. I get the usual beeps, and I can see the activity light flashing, then going solid. Nothing else happens.

This adapter does have a master/slave jumper. Tried setting it to slave (the default is Master), and it will just flash the activity light a couple times and stay off. Nothing else happens.

2. SATA to IDE adapter

So, this adapter uses a JMicron chipset and has a Master/Slave jumper. I used one like this in the past with an old PC and it worked just fine.

Wrote the Cobra Arcade image to a 500GB 2.5" SATA disk I had lying around and plugged everything in.
In Master mode, the behavior is the same as the CF adapter: the activity light will stay solid and do nothing. In Slave mode, it flashes and stays off.

So, I guess it's still a no-go. Perhaps there is a maximum size of hard disk supported by the System 256? Unfortunately I don't have a smaller disk on hand. Maybe I'll try with one of those cheap as chips chinese SATA SSDs (the ones without DRAM that are like $7 for a 64GB).

 

[doccaz]

I don't have a 64GB SD to write the whole Cobra Arcade image on hand (just 16 and 128GB ones) to test the disk size theory. But I decided to write what I could to the 16GB one just to see what happens (i.e. does it even try to boot?)

And... I can see that it apparently *does* try to boot. I got a couple of flashes on the activity light, then a solid light... and after a while one of the LEDs by the memory card turned red. This is definitely different than before (the LEDs turned off). Does anyone know or have a service manual that mentions what if these LEDs have defined colors for error states?

 

[doccaz]

Okay, so we have two new contenders:

One is a very cheap SATA to IDE converter with a JMicron Chipset, the other is a KingSpec 64GB SSD. It's the cheap DRAM-less type. It's waaaay slower than a regular SSD, but it still manages 250MB/s read and 52MB/s write speeds.

So, I recorded the Cobra Arcade image on it, plugged it in... And I can see that it *does* try to read something, then goes solid... And I get a red LED on the memory card slot.

I also tried a 64GB SD card on the other SD to CF adapter just to check if it does indeed try to anything else on a smaller than 128GB card... But it doesn't. Same behavior as the SSD.

It would really help if we had a serial port/console that outputs *something*...

 

[jammajunk]

I'm starting to think that there wont be any 'easy' solution. Damn

 

[nem]

A new challenger approaches.

Big Reservoir 128gb 2.5" PATA SSD and a 44-pin to 40-pin adapter

Result:

It doesn't work. The access light doesn't even turn on. Super disappointed. The drive actually supports quite a lot of ATA commands, including SETMAX.

Has anyone tried a large CF card? I think that's pretty much what's left for options. A 128gb card costs 80 euros here. Not sure I want to spend that money to try it out.

 

[doccaz]

It doesn't work. The access light doesn't even turn on. Super disappointed. The drive actually supports quite a lot of ATA commands, including SETMAX.

Has anyone tried a large CF card? I think that's pretty much what's left for options. A 128gb card costs 80 euros here. Not sure I want to spend that money to try it out.

The largest CF card I have here is 32GB. I do have that SD-to-CF adapter, which I tested with both 64 and 128GB cards, but it didn't work.
128GB CF cards are quite expensive over here too, I'm not willing to spend that money for just that test

 

[lunasea0083]

I ordered one of the cheap SATA-to-IDE adapters and I'll test it with an SSD with the System256 when it arrives. The SD one would be a lot more practical though. If it worked, I could add an SD flat cable extension and mount it outside the case. Swapping "hard disks" would be very easy...
There's also the hope that one of the current optical disc emulators will do HDDs at one point at a not-so-expensive price.

This one does HDD already: https://3do.dev/en-br/products/ide-emulator-batch1

https://github.com/FCare/SataTo3DO，，Is this used on System 256?

 

[doccaz]

https://github.com/FCare/SataTo3DO，，Is this used on System 256?

I don't think so. According to this, it used a proprietary Panasonic IDE interface like the ones PCs used way back that required a special card. But with enough tinkering (and a great deal of knowledge), maybe someone could adapt this to regular IDE. I'm not holding my breath though, it's quite complex to do so.

I've found another (less expensive) ODE that emulates ATA drives that was originally made for Roland MIDI keyboards. I took a gamble and bought it to test with the System 256. I've worked with the programmer for the last few months to try and get it to work with System 256 by capturing traffic from a "known good" drive, with mixed success. It does support the ATAPI protocol used by the DVD drive, but only in a basic manner. He implemented a few missing commands and expected answers according to the captures, so it mostly works. I can boot into Tekken 4 DR, but eventually it locks up or loses sync. As far as we could gather, the I/O drivers vary from game to game, and is way, way too fussy about timing.

I also tried using a hard disk image with it, and while it appears to be recognized (and starts to boot), I couldn't find an HDD image that actually works. Maybe because I don't have the proper I/O board and/or controllers for something like Cobra The Arcade, or it does look for a specific vendor/model for the hard disks? I don't know.

 

[Franco23444]

I also tried using a hard disk image with it, and while it appears to be recognized (and starts to boot), I couldn't find an HDD image that actually works. Maybe because I don't have the proper I/O board and/or controllers for something like Cobra The Arcade, or it does look for a specific vendor/model for the hard disks? I don't know.

Some games can boot with any or no JVS and the drives aren’t copy protected, problem is the way they work

 

[lunasea0083]

I remember SEGA's GEMU as a standard IDE

 

[lunasea0083]

I remember that the IDE to SATA with the JM20330 chip worked on Segadc, but not on the System256 host.

 

[andymage]

South Korea SKY simulated virtual optical drive mobile hard disk box 2.5-inch USB3.0 SATA3 solid-state mechanical high-speed box
It can simulate iso and HDD. Can this device be used?

 

[nem]

It's USB. How could it work?

 

[andymage]

It's USB. How could it work?

If I use this IDE to convert to USB, I am not sure whether the IDE cable has 5v DC power，
It's a stupid thing to do, but I want to try it anyway.
Maybe the final result is that it can simulate an optical drive, but it is not a true ATAPI DVD-ROM.
2X6 BIOS supports ATAPI IDE HDD or CD/DVD-ROM. The optical drive and hard disk IDE remain independent of each other and cannot be overlapped and accessed in parallel. Only one of the two can run.
ATA-6 (ATA100)
The ATA100 interface and data cable are the same as ATA66. They also use a 40-pin 80-core data transmission cable. The ATA100 interface is fully backward compatible. Devices that support the ATA33 and ATA66 interfaces can continue to be used in the ATA100 interface. The ATA100 specification can easily deal with the difficult problems of ATA33 and ATA66 interfaces. ATA100 can enable the external transfer rate of hard drives to reach 100MB/s. Seagate and Western Digital both use the ATA 100 standard.