Apple iPod - Hard drive interfacing (featured on hackaday.com)

You sir are an idiot, but for a one time fee of...nothing i can stab you with a pitchfork for your lack of inteligence

BTW...nice to see a useful Ipod...

 

agreed about the jab at mr irwin, lets try to stay on topic, I want this thread to be as useful as it possibly can be for anyone wanting to do something similar.

Just as a side note there are several possibilities for something like this as an application inside your laptop.

1) most laptops have 2 pcmcia sockets (newer ones seem to sometimes only have 1, and the new pci-e socket) 1 of which could be rewired to accept these little hd's So that say your bottom socket took the little hd's and your top one took regular pcmcia cards, kinda neat because these can add 10 - 40gb of extra removeable storage, and in all truth really wouldnt add much more junk to the inside of your laptop, and nothing would be external

2) you could relocate a pcmcia socket using a similar method just extending the socket elsewhere, I guess if you were building a computer out of a laptop you could relocate the socket to a more convienent spot.


Just some thoughts, I believe I will start to cut out the front bezel to my enclosure, I also had to resolder a few wires that broke loose, always happens with these DIY jobs. About to put some hotglue on there to keep them in place.


Any input is greatly appreciated.

 

Okay, SO i decided to move on with building the enclosure, which is not all that complicated in theory, but me + plastic + needs a nice hole (can) = disaster, lets find out...


First things first I had to go ahead and put some hot glue on the pcmcia socket as those connections are really flimsy and fragile, Replaced a few wires that were being a problem, and all is happy

Pictures:



Next of course comes the long and boring task of dremeling and using my xacto nife to cut a hole in the front bezel

Pictures:

Preliminary cuts on the bezel, and then we start to see mr drive poke through a bit.


Finally the drive and its bay fit in the hole.

Just a side note: I am actually mounting the bay flush with the outside of the bezel reason being that if the bay is mounted internal and not flush on the outside the drive sinks about 2mm into the enclosure, and then you cannot push it in fully, so id rather have it flush. Plus it make sure it docks right when you put it in the first time.

Pictures:

Before and after hots of the bezel on the front, its not pretty yet, more work to do to clean it up.

Now time for some glory shots:






So whats next? Well now I need to get some more super glue to attache the bay to the front bezel so it does not move around, and possibly work a bit on the eject button, as now there is no way to get the drive out without using plyers on the side of the drive where the screw is (trust me i was careful).

Next will be to seal it all up and enjoy my product and to work out any kinks that come up. So its not finished yet, but it is certainly starting to take shape.


Any input is appreciated.

 

So moving on towards completion, I have decided to add HD power and activity led's to the front of the enclosure, all good enclosures have them, so why not mine.

In all truth there already was a bi-color led at the top of the enclosure near the usb plug, but it is hard to tell when it is active or not. I prefer to have the different led's, and at the front of the englosure where my drive and eject button are/will be


So first of all I needed to find the LED's I was going to use, rummaging about in my spare parts box, I found a little header which had two led's I desoldered off a dead network appliance. I then took those out of the casing and ended up with a yellow and green led (green for power, yellow for activity)

Pictures:




Next was to start work on the cable to attache to the led's at the front:


I took the pins out of the salvaged cdrom audio cable, and soldered my wires to the pins and then put them back in the connector.


Then I soldered the LED's to the ends of those wires.


Next was to figure out how to connect this thing to the pcb. easy solder the middle pin of the 3pin header I had to the bottom of the board which was the same ground as was connected to the middle pin of the bi-color led. After which I just needed to run two wires from the header to the legs on the led

Pictures:


Next was to get holes in the front of the enclosure for the led's easy work with my little hand drill to get the pilot holes, and then i used my dremel to widen them just a bit. turned out very nice

Pictures:



Now for the glory shots of it working!


They are not quite that bright in person, but they do work amazingly well, I am quite pleased with the outcome of this phase.


So whats next? Eject button (I simply cannot put it off any longer...)



Questions? Comments? Input? glad to hear anything!

 

Warrior_Rocker, Swampytoadstool, and I all know each other. therefore swampy is being him self. and the other one that made the comment about mr.Irwin comment, yall dont even know him and already know he is a ****ING IDIOT.... which he is. and i would know....

but edit: BTW back OT even though you refuse to speak to me mr.warrior. your soldering skills have def destroyed mine... awesome job on makeing it work even though im sure erik told you what i said but still...

 

thanks, The soldering took time and patience, but in the end the work paid off. I guess to some it may seem like, why does he bother with so much time on a project that gives you an external 15gig hd. Couldnt you just sell the little apple hd on ebay and buy a real laptop hd?

sure I could... but where is the modding spirit. Also long ago I discovered this hd has a few bad sectors on it, previous owner was quite abusive, I also have a strong moral value to not sell damaged goods on ebay. there are two many scandals already.

Also I plan on getting more of the little hd's as the older ipod's become less popular I can get them cheap, ones with broken lcd's dead batteries etc.

and lastly, I just wanted to prove to myself that I could accomplish this project. and perhaps provide useful information to anyone else who wanted to connect up one of these little drives.



Today is kinda turning out to be a disaster as the bad sectors on this hd are really cramping my style so to speak. I need to find a good scandisk utility, like the one out of win98, chkdsk just isnt quite as pretty, nor can you see what is actually going on.


Hope to work out the eject button, its really one of the last things to do, then glue the parts in place.

 

Okay, So I finally convinced myself to figure out the eject button, just due to how the apple hd differs from a normal pcmcia card caused issues, as well as making a button for the rod that connected the eject mechanism to the button.

I figured for the button I would want something round but similar in color to the enclosure, after looking for a while nothing.... but wait, is that the back end of a old useless drill bit? I think soo!!!!

Pictures:


Just a few extra glory shots of what the insides look like, and then some final shots of the button in action

Pictures:




It was a fairly difficult project, but well worth it. I am also doing song recovery for people who have the 3g-4g ipods who break their screens and whatnot on campus here, so its nice to have a very simple device to get the music off.


Comments? love to hear them.

 

Well done, that must have taken some patience with those fines wires!

Seriously though, well done, you must be happy with the result.

 

Very Nice... i like your choice on having the hdd removable from the enclosure like that.

 

for all my hate of all things iPod, i think this is a well researched and very well excecuted mod

i am very impressed

 

now that is a great idea hopefully youll make enough changeee to come visit NC!? what size is the drill bit though? and maybe paint the tip silver so it stands out... also does it just fall out or do you have a thingy to hold it in place..?

 

Trust me, I hate the iPod just as much as the next person, that is why I did not look more into trying to use the iPod's usb interface for this mod. I wanted this to be as far from apple as possible. It took a good bit of research to get the truth. It seems a good bit of speculation had been put behind the interface of these drives. So a little guess work came quite in hand.

And thanks for the compliment, it pushed both my soldering and fabrication skills.

The Drill bit is a 3/16 inch bit. Its one of those crappy bits you can get in the check out isle of lowes. for like 99c.... After about 2 uses its too dull to drill through air.. if you get what i mean.

Actually the eject mechanism keeps the push button from falling out of place. This is kind of weird but bear with me. The way I attached the drill bit to the rod that connected to the eject lever was to first dremel a flat surface on the last 1/4 inch of the bit then I dremeled a small notch on the other side. Wrapped that with some single core copper wire, and soldered away. The idea is that rosin when it cools will act as a super glue to hold the two metals together. also the wire wrapped around it provides extra strength. as the solder will get down into some of the crevaces and keep it from moving around. Its very very strong. and keeps the drill bit from moving backwards or forwards. the only movement it can make is the same that the rod can.

These Pictures may shed some light on that:

At the connector end of the pcmcia socket is where the rod connects to the lever that pushes the drive out. the way its connected prevents it from falling off, or moving around except for the push in and out motion of the button. It will only go as far as the lever that pushes the hd out will let it go.

 

Great mod, very interesting

BUT

PLEASE buy a decent digital camera!!

 

I am very short on the cashflow or else I would be happy and go buy things, I am using my motorola Razr v3c, I took the images in 640x480 and resized them to 320x240 to regain some quality. I can take images in 1280x1024, but more pixels does not mean better quality.

The phone has a 1.3mp camera, so its sub any standard. I wish the images could be better. and I will take some more if I get access to a better one.

 

very cool mod but i have a question and maybe this has been answered and i missed it. why not just go on e-bay and but a cf/ide adaptor for $2 to $10 and throw it in a case?

 

Excellent question and I am glad you asked:
1) The Apple hd is not CF, Although the signals are the same, its not the same connector as a cf card (although you could plug it into a cf reader, but you will fry it) The hd is actually pin compatable with ATA or more correctly Laptop ATA
-Pinouts of CF / Pinouts of ATA

2) No Adapter for these has an eject button, A unique feature of my enclosure is that it has an eject button, and seperate HD activity and Power led's

3) It didnt cost me a dime to make, as I already had the parts, I could have bought one of the adapters on ebay for 1.8'' drives. but hey, there is no fun when you just buy your mod.

 

thanks for the info. i need to read better. your second paragraph in your original post actually has the answers that i did not read correctly. anyway thanks again for the info and good job.

 

Happy to announce that I have made the likes of hackaday.com

I am honored. Please visit http://hackaday.com

Mod on!

 

Good job dude I told you that youd get on hack a day... you owe me a cookie

 

i have toshiba mk3008GAL lying around from broken 5g video ( i dont know if its working) and it has different pinout ant its thinner...