Electronics SATA Question/Challenge

Well I bough tthem and I've taken one apart. Now this thuing looks like its a conversion of a scsi swap thing from the connectors so I have two PCBs, but there is and activity LED off it. I'll rig it up for a test when I get back.

The drawback is that its all rather bulky. Photos this evening.

 

Nope, I wasn't thinking this morning.

They've left out the activity light for SATA and as the whole thing uses fly leads rather than a backplane its no use whatsoever.



Next.....

 

OK I've found a better spec
http://www.sata-io.org/docs/S2Ext_1_2_Gold.pdf
Section 2.3 (page 19 of the pdf)

I've bought a few SATA power connectors off Kustom and I think I'll have to destroy one to see if I can tap pin 11 from it. Still looks tricky and finign a backplane board would be so much easier.

 

OK I've taken a hack:
First the straight connector

as you can see the pins are joined ratehr too far down so not much hop of picking off 11.

Now attacking the right angle model.

I've cut in and got to where pin 11 seperates from 10 and 12. For this mode we need to isolated 11 and run a lead from it.

Filpped over and cut up

You can see these pins ar emuch longer and there is a bit of roon to make a cut.


And with an undamaged model



Now to do this properly I need to drill an access hole down to the pins so I can see where I am.Then drill through pin 11 to cut it off from the ground. Finally solder on a lead to that pin and backfill with something serious (Araldite?)

The grond line can be taken form the power cable side.

Any comments? Am I mad? Anyone got an estimate of how many of the connectors I'll need to attack per sucessfull conversion? (£1 per shot) And where can I get a cheap SATA drive as a test subject!

 

Got it

Hey guys,
Just could not let this project die. I have finally gotten this to work using pin-11 on the WD raptor HDD. This may no work on your HDD. I know it is not going to work on some of the Maxtor HDDs because they use pin-11 for staggered startup. All I can say is it worked on both of my HDDs. On my HDD, Pin-11 was 3.3V with no disk activity and 0V with activity. This is about the same as the HDD activity connection on my motherboard.
To get a working activity light I hooked a 5V line to the anode of my LED and connected the cathode to pin-11 on the HDD. I should add a resistor just to be safe, but it works.

 

Good work. Pics of the wiring would be good


Alas none of my (many) SATA disk supports activity pin 11

 

I guess what most people have trouble with is the connector. I am using a connector like the blue one Risky tried. All you have to do is take the ground wire out (The one with pin-11) and bend the other 2 pins down. I posted some pictures to better explain.


Large


Large


Large

 

WAIT
in the data sheet you linked...

(sec 6.3)

doesnt "Serial ATA devices do not provide support for an activity LED indication. " meen DONT HOOK AN LED UP TO THIS PIN???? or am i missing something?? i wana see this work as much as you do, but this could deff be bad news for the HD's health

 

Yes, SATA does not have a standard for an activity LED, but the data sheet also shows that Pin-11 is reserved (Page 45). This is important because it shows that pin-11 can be used for more than just ground. Pin-11 seems to be used for a few different things. For example, Maxtor uses it on some Hard Drives to control staggered startup. It looks like Western Digital decided to use it for HDD activity.

http://www.wdc.com/en/library/sata/2579-001097.pdf
This page suggests other HDD manufacturers could be using pin-11 for an activity LED.
http://support.intel.com/support/motherboards/server/sb/cs-020136.htm

It is probably a good idea to take a multimeter and see what voltage you get on pin-11. That should be an easy and safe way to see if it is corresponding to disk activity.

 

Thanks for the pics there.

I see you're doing it using the regualar ATX power for the drive. I had been trying to work it out while pwoering of the SATA power, which was goinh to be trick to say the least!


Anyway it's put off for the moment. Hopefully by the time I get suitable disks some cleevr chap will ahve come up with a power connector with LED jumper.

 

No I didn't.

In that PDF you linked:

Great detective work on that Pin11.

Any SATA IDE LED mod would be difficult.
(Although most new motherboards do support a SATA IDE LED though the normal IDE LED header)

You guys have covered most everything in this thread.
You have to reverse engineer either the harddrive, or the motherboard SATA controller.
Searching for the part-number on many integrated circuits on google often results in a PDF with a pin-out.