[IDE harddrive controller]

[randomdude]

Hi guys. I'mnew to this board, so go easy on me.

Anyway, I've got me a shiny new gp2x, and I'm feeling a bit limited by the amount of storage space I have availiable. I'm thinking of building an MMC-slot to IDE converter, and I was wondering if theres any commercial possibility for it - who would be interested in one? It'd (probably) be in a case to take a laptop style 2.5" HD, or maybe the slim ones as used in the ipod.

It'd take a fair chunk of time to make, and may well not come to fruition at all - but I think it'd be really nice to plop a 60Gb drive on the thing. I can't see the firmware being bug-free enough to cope with such an extreme situation - but I figure its GPL'ed, so I can bugfix it (brainpower permitting).

The only potential problem I can see is power usage - but I figure that if I need to, I can attatch a battery to it. As long as its small enough to fit in my pocket, I think it'll be good for flights/etc.. full MAME romset and a few DVDs.. Yeah, I couldget used to that :)

So yeah - Any comments? Just as a rough idea, how many people would (possibly)be interested?

Ta muchly - Randomdude the Gamesfairy.

[yaustar]

Honestly, I dont think there be that much demand for it. The currently supported Mame Romset can easily fit on a 1gig card with room to spare and I can fit a few prepared movies on a 1 gig card nicely

[Is'lan]

I disagree. One of the main concerns with the GP2X is the limited memory storage, with SD cards being too expensive to get more than one. However, I'm trying more to get the hard drive hooked up through the USB port somehow. Yet, if you managed to make a connector and get the firmware working well enough, I might buy it for a few bucks if the USB method fails.

[funtasticguy]

I know that I would be interested. Indeed, what held my decision to buy a GP2X is the lack of a hard drive. It was between this and I-station's V43 (which is also open source and coders have also gotten emulators working on it).

So, I say go for it!

[yaustar]

So you want to carry around a HDD and a Handheld? Even when there are 2 and 4 gig SD cards aviailable and dropping in price? Each to their own I guess.

Side note: Mircodrives however are another thing altogether.

The I station looks nice but cant really see how the heck you are going to play games with just 2 action buttons unless you connect it to a seperate controller. As a media player it would be a lot better though.

[Is'lan]

The GP2X only supports up 2 GB of SD cards (maybe 4GB weren't tested). But memory in SD cards is a LOT more expensive than HDD. I'd rather just have 1 GB SD card and a 80 HDD.

[luke wells]

Yeah, you can get a 20-30gig hard drive (which is of course loads bigger and also faster) for the same price as a decent brand 1gig SD card.

For games, I have all my favourite roms (hundreds) on a 1gig card with space to spare, but for media (mainly movies really) a pocket hard drive linkup would be excellent.

The fact that they would need joining by cable would be slightly less then ideal. What would be a fantastic idea (if it has not already been done) would be a pocket hard drive with built in battery pack and bluetooth! then fit a bluetooth SD card to the gp2x and you have wireless access to your pocket hard drive.

[kaib0rg]

Yeah, you can get a 20-30gig hard drive (which is of course loads bigger and also faster) for the same price as a decent brand 1gig SD card.

I have a crazy feeling that a hard drive is going to be slower than an sd card by far. Just by the nature of their operation, mechnical vs. solidstate, it should show that.

For games, I have all my favourite roms (hundreds) on a 1gig card with space to spare, but for media (mainly movies really) a pocket hard drive linkup would be excellent.

Media? I'm still baffled as to why people want to use a device designed with gaming in mind as a media player. Buy an ipod, or better yet--a creative M.

The fact that they would need joining by cable would be slightly less then ideal. What would be a fantastic idea (if it has not already been done) would be a pocket hard drive with built in battery pack and bluetooth! then fit a bluetooth SD card to the gp2x and you have wireless access to your pocket hard drive.

How would you suggest power to that hard drive to generate the bluetooth signals? Gonna have a cable running out of your pocket to the wall? Plus bluetooth within the gp2x via sd card (if that's even possible...maybe with some kind of CF conversion) would drain power faster. So while you'd have videos to play, you might not have the time to watch them. So you'd plug your gp2x into a wall outlet right? Well, why not just put your movies on recordable media and watch via your dvd player then?

The best thing to do is wait for SD prices to come down. It's the best possible technology for the gp2x. Internal hard drive would lead to discfailure upon drop, and too much battery consumption. External hard drive requires a secondary power source, which makes the entire concept immobile. SD is solid state, requires no external power, is being rapidly developed, and prices are dropping due to demand. There is no argument here.

[Is'lan]

I have a crazy feeling that a hard drive is going to be slower than an sd card by far. Just by the nature of their operation, mechnical vs. solidstate, it should show that.

Media? I'm still baffled as to why people want to use a device designed with gaming in mind as a media player. Buy an ipod, or better yet--a creative M.

The best thing to do is wait for SD prices to come down. It's the best possible technology for the gp2x. Internal hard drive would lead to discfailure upon drop, and too much battery consumption. External hard drive requires a secondary power source, which makes the entire concept immobile. SD is solid state, requires no external power, is being rapidly developed, and prices are dropping due to demand. There is no argument here.

The SD card might be around the same speed of a hard drive, but would NOT be faster than it "by far".

As for media, the GP2X was designed for movies as well as games. A GP2X with hard drive support would kick an iPod's ass.

It wouldn't be THAT difficult to get a secondary power source for the hard drive. At worse, you might just only get to use it when you have a plug around, and I can deal with that. My plan: have a jacket suited up with enough gadgets that I can be considered a portable computer, heh heh..

[kaib0rg]

The SD card might be around the same speed of a hard drive, but would NOT be faster than it "by far".


After doing some searching, I stand corrected.

As for media, the GP2X was designed for movies as well as games.

And let me guess, it was also designed to play mp3's, view pictures, and organize data on an SD card.

One must realise that while features may be available, the unit was not so much marketed as a P*M*P, but rather a PEP, which would lead one to believe that it was designed as such as well. My cell phone plays games, surfs the web, takes pictures and videos, and organizes my schedule, but the manufacturer added these as perks to a communications device.

It wouldn't be THAT difficult to get a secondary power source for the hard drive. At worse, you might just only get to use it when you have a plug around, and I can deal with that.

Your TV/VCR/computer/DVD player isn't good enough?

My plan: have a jacket suited up with enough gadgets that I can be considered a portable computer, heh heh..

The Scottevests are really nice, i hear.

[luke wells]

I have a crazy feeling that a hard drive is going to be slower than an sd card by far. Just by the nature of their operation, mechnical vs. solidstate, it should show that.

Naaa, never in a million years. I use fast SD cards like PNY or Kingston Elite and they are always slower then any hard drive.



Media? I'm still baffled as to why people want to use a device designed with gaming in mind as a media player. Buy an ipod, or better yet--a creative M.

What would be the point of buying a seperate media player when we have gp2x's? because the GP2x runs linux it is going to be easy to add a wide range of codecs as required, whereas with dedicated media players you are limited by the preinstalled codecs and usually have to re-encode everything to work on your media player. So far my GP2X has played all the test avi's I have stuck on it without re-encoding or resizing. Aside from the fact that I don't have money to waste on a seperate media player. The GP2x does it well, and will continue with even better support.



How would you suggest power to that hard drive to generate the bluetooth signals? Gonna have a cable running out of your pocket to the wall? Plus bluetooth within the gp2x via sd card (if that's even possible...maybe with some kind of CF conversion) would drain power faster. So while you'd have videos to play, you might not have the time to watch them. So you'd plug your gp2x into a wall outlet right? Well, why not just put your movies on recordable media and watch via your dvd player then?.

What? Whats wrong with a battery for the HD? You can't tell me that you can't run a HD from a battery, especially if its a HD designed for portable devices (look at the ipods etc)

I think alot of people are missing the point of owning a handheld console/media player. I use it because I am out and about and not sat at home in front of my TV, otherwise I would just play on my real megadrive/amiga/pc engine/dvd player/cd player and not need a handheld at all. Thats why I am saying who the hells going to want to plug in a usb hub and wire hard drive and all sorts of other devides to their GP2x. Like I say whats the point of a handheld if you need 15 cables plugged into it to make it do anything useful.

The portable hard drive may not be such a good idea, all I am saying is that if someones going to make one then it needs to be battery powered and prefably wireless.

Yes you can get wireless SD cards and you have been able to do so for years (had one on my old ipaq)


The best thing to do is wait for SD prices to come down. It's the best possible technology for the gp2x. Internal hard drive would lead to discfailure upon drop, and too much battery consumption. External hard drive requires a secondary power source, which makes the entire concept immobile. SD is solid state, requires no external power, is being rapidly developed, and prices are dropping due to demand. There is no argument here.

Again your missing the point of this thread. 20gig hard drive = cost of 1gig SD card. It will be years before 20gig SD cards are available (IF they are ever available) and they will cost a fortune. Look at the cost of a 4gig SD card compared with a 1gig card... Not 4 times the price, more like 8 times the price.

Yes SD card is the best thing you can use as its small/light/doesnt drain power, I am simply making comments for/against the original posters idea.

Luke

[Ace-T]

Hi all.. I read the threads, and I too is interested in having an HD connected to my cell.phone.

But, I've been thinking. According to Nokia (I have a Nokia 6260) my phone supports only (?) 128 or 256 MB of RS-MMC- cards. I was thinking if there's any possibillity to have some circuit that could fool the phone into thinking that it is only 128 or 256 when it in fact would be a lot larger than that, say 20 GB (I also own a Sony Walkman NW-HD1).

I'm the one that are not afraid of modding stuff, and I was thinking if I could get my hands on such a device that could do just that; convert & emulate an RS-MMC (Wich as I understand, is of the same pinouts as an regular MMC- card) to simply attach the harddrive on the bottom of the phone, and perhaps extend the 'chassie' of the phone to fit it all.

My thinking was to more or less slaughter my walkman and use the HD and the battery (Or get a bigger / more powerful one). I was thinking since I've seen (I think) some kind of similar konverter, or better yet; thinking of those card- readers that you can connect to your IDE- port, it wouldn't be all that diffrent the other way, or would it?

Anyway, let's say one exists, I was thinking of cutting a small whole in the hatch where I would put a dummy- card, if one were to call it that, wich had leads to the adapter, furter on to the HD.

Something like that.

I know some ppl. might think this is a bad idea, but I beg to differ:

Why does a cell.phone has to be so small that you almost forget you have it on you..? Or by mistake left in a pants pocket and into the washing machine and ooops..!!?

I'm not saying that a phone should be in brick size or so, but by my calculations it would be no more thicker than perhaps a maximum of 2 cm, wich one defintelly could live with. In that calculation is also an extra battery for the phone it self.

When the phone is closed it would be about 4,5 cm thick. Atleast you wouldn't forget that it's there.

One thing I just got to think about, my walkman is really quite smart, when playing a tune or two, it speeds up the HD, reads the info needed (The entire track) and stores it into RAM, then it goes idle, thus saving energy. That too would be nice if the dummy as I wrote above would be some kind of regular RS-MMC- card in it self, just caching of course. But, *sigh* at this stage it would be some kind of software taking over there. I could be a form of BIOS, but.. Well.. It's no longer any simplicity to creating one of these. But it's still good brain- candy :p

[kromis]

FYI i got an AData 4gig card from NewEgg for $85 or so. It doesnt work via the usb cable for some reason. I need to use a SD USB drive, but that works perfectly.

I'd suggest holding off on external hard drives. By the time you develop it, SD cards will have dropped in price even more and it wont really be that desireable.

besides, how much crap do you really want to have on this thing?

[sukhi-2006]

Why are you lot wasting your time saying hard drive isn't good idea please post sensible comments you lot acting like kids.

The hard drive is very good idea especially if you want to store loads of mega cd games and other stuff imagine a 4gb card doing this that's a joke which are very expensive buying 200gb hard drive is amazing it will blow away any sd card.

[yaustar]

This is a dead thread made 1 year ago. Locked