Using an IDE Hard Drive with a 8051 Board and 82C55 Chip (2005) | Hacker News Reader

Using an IDE Hard Drive with a 8051 Board and 82C55 Chip (2005)

pjrc.com

72 pointspeter_d_sherman18 comments

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Yup, I too wanted to see the offering from US Software, it looks like they have diversified somewhat :)

Nowadays, there's elm-chan's FatFs: http://elm-chan.org/fsw/ff/00index_e.html

I love this guy. I have bought countless Teensy-ies from this website and his stuff is so solid.

A true 100x engineer and a really nice guy.

I bought a teensy on impulse to mess around with LED strips, and this library he wrote is awesome:

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_OctoWS2811.html#tech

It takes care of all the low-level details and offloads almost all of the work onto the DMA controller, leaving the CPU free to service interrupts or run other code. It reduces controlling individual LEDs to something as simple as a putPixel.

Hah, this takes me back -- I own the 8051 dev board he made and at one point built the original MP3 player design (though I don't think mine ever worked quite right): https://www.pjrc.com/tech/mp3/old_player.html

I should dig that up and get it running again.

Funnily enough, even then there was likely a more powerful general purpose microcontroller inside the drive.

Kind of useless with the present day SATA serial interface. The parallel interface is so simple that you can essentially bit bang it but with for the serial interface you really need a controller due to the strict timing.

CompactFlash cards still support PATA so not entirely useless.

Other than the link mishap, I would really like to see more DIY guides like this on HN to extend and hack old hardwares that otherwise would have been ending up in junk yard.

Somewhat related question:

Is there an easy way to power an IDE drive so that the motor does not eventually spin down?

(I don't care about reading/writing, only spinning)

Answering my own question: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3BFewPYB8

Last time I had this problem was before youtube :)

(2005)

Also, warning:

The link to "US Software" now leads to an adults-only website. I recommend not clicking this link, it has nothing to do with software.

Actually, it is (1999):

> This code is an original work by Paul Stoffregen, written in December 1999

The 2005 update just applied minor changes for a new board revision:

> Status: This page is complete, code updated for rev 5 board, January 2005

I found a company called US Software Ltd, but they appear to be an app house in Bangladesh.

http://www.ussoftwareltd.com/

I'm suspecting that 12 year old drive controller code is just no longer available for sale.

Based on the Internet Archive[0] + Google, the correct link is: http://www.nationaldatamux.com/lantronix/usfiles.html

"United States Software, Inc. a wholly owned subsidiary of Lantronix, Inc." ... now apparently owned by NDM Networks, Inc.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20010429175811/http://www.ussw.c...

Bullshit. This should be removed from HN. That first link about "US Software" is NSFW to say the least.

Really? Have you not been around long enough to witness bitrot and squatting of domain names? There were sixty-eight anchors in that page and one is no longer valid.

I've sent an email to Paul because you're too indignant to be helpful.

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