Would this be possible? MP3 Player Harddrive

Kyosho · Post by **Kyosho** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 12:52 pm

You've probably seen those little cases you can buy on newegg to make an internal harddrive into an external USB harddrive. Then there are ipods that use harddrives in them. And yet again there are mp3 players that use flash memory.

What I'm thinking is, is that I'm sure there's some sort of IDE to Flash converter. I mean, there's a flash to IDE converter, like Ben used on his Atari 800 XE Laptop. So the opposite probably exists, right? Well, get a cheapo old mp3 player that accepts Flash cards (like the Rio PMP300), plug in the harddrive, figure out some sort of battery power, and BAM... cheap, HUGE iPod.

Possible? Might need to format the harddrive a certain way, etc. But otherwise?

Edit: Er.. the PMP300 may not be the best option, seeing as it just does everything track by track, and a 20gb harddrive would hold thousands, so..finding a song would take an eternity. But maybe a newer one that can do the folders thing, etc.

Corscaria · Post by **Corscaria** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 1:19 pm

flash is a technology, IDE is an interface.

CompactFlash uses an IDE interface shoved into a smaller connector.

Most flash MP3 player use thier flash with the native NAND flash interface (which is identical to smartmedia and xD, just different pinouts). It would take a microcontroller to connect a IDE HD to a devive expecting a NAND flash device, and the MP3 player may not beable to accept the latency of a HD.

The specifications of both interfaces are easily availible, so if your willing to put in the time, it's possible to make the adapter yourself but it won't be easy.

JackFrost22 · Post by **JackFrost22** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:22 pm

You could build a mp3 player from a decoder chip, amp, lcd, etctera and make that take ide. Most of the chips are free. The hard part is finding or making schematics.

Post by **Sparkfist** » Tue Mar 07, 2006 7:35 pm

Theoreticly, yes you can do it. If you can find a MP3 player that uses Compactflash, you can take the pinout of the Compactflash card and wire up an ATA/IDE adapter. The key problems are if the player will read any size partion, because some have a limite of 512MB, 2Gb, 4Gb, ect., the other is power. If you're using a laptop hard drive it will be easiter, but will draw more current.

Good luck on that.

P.S. Lady Ada has a project called Minty MP3, you can use that to make one. I again don't know if it has a partition size limitation those.