[Robotgroup] CD/hard drive hacks?

[Andre Lamothe]

90% of 90's tech use IDE interfaces, "integrated device interface", they all 
have drivers that you send commands like move head, etc. then the 
motherboard sends the bytes to the IDE interface, so first study IDE 
interface protocal, most things use this, 40 signals, you don't need to use 
them all, then if you use a PC its easy, if you want to control by a 
uController then you need a lot of IOs. Floppy drives are differnet of 
course, the "integrated electronics" are on the motherboard, so these are 
even MORE low level that HD/CD drives since you talk DIRECTLY to the drive 
and don't go thru the IDE layer.

But, the idea is that when you say "open file" a billion things happen, that 
API call, call down to the disk driver, which then sends commands to the IDE 
interface to read in sectors, then they are interpretted as FAT16/32/NTFS 
etc. information, then the API figures out where, what, how then starts 
writing data to sectors, reading, etc. So you don't want high level control, 
you just want to throw commands at the IDE interface to the CD rom, line 
turn on motor, move head, turn on laser, etc.

So start with IDE interface research then that will give you the 
fundamentals to control IDE or similar devices directly.

Andre

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "brooksdesign" <brooksdesign at peoplepc.com>
To: "The Robot Group Mailing List" <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 4:11 PM
Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] CD/hard drive hacks?


>  I just sent a more focused description while you were replying, but yes 
> this is what I want. But let's say I want to take an old cd burner, what 
> KIND of interface? I guess I would need a part number for the head so you 
> could track down the specs or are they mostly all the same?
> -brooks
>
> -----Original Message-----
>>From: Andre Lamothe <ceo at nurve.net>
>>Sent: Jul 25, 2008 4:56 PM
>>To: The Robot Group Mailing List <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
>>Subject: Re: [Robotgroup] CD/hard drive hacks?
>>
>>Sure, you either just de-solder the connectors and control directly, OR
>>write IDE interface commands to the drive and control the heads manually,
>>you can seek to track, sector, etc. I have made disk drives play music
>>before in the 80's (no IDE interface of course then), but I have done it 
>>to
>>floppy drives and IDE hard drives. Basically, if you write a disk disk
>>driver then you have to control the drive mechanics yourself which is what
>>you are trying to do.
>>
>>So really all you need to do is decide on the drive, the interface, make 
>>an
>>interface, and then throw commands at it with a microcontroller or whatver
>>you want to connect it to.
>>
>>Andre'
>>
>>----- Original Message ----- 
>>From: "brooksdesign" <brooksdesign at peoplepc.com>
>>To: <robotgroup at puremagic.com>
>>Sent: Friday, July 25, 2008 3:39 PM
>>Subject: [Robotgroup] CD/hard drive hacks?
>>
>>
>>> Anybody out there ever hacked into the read/write heads of a hard drive 
>>> or
>>> CD burner and their actuators? More to the point the manual control of 
>>> the
>>> signals going in and out without the use of a proccessor as there would 
>>> be
>>> no need for tracking for the intended use.
>>> -brooks
>>>
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