gigs of space :-)

[Bobsonsirjonny]

http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?act=SF&f=7

Topic called an idea - posted by me.


I posted this in the wrong area. Sorry.


But I think it would be a really cool thing to have 40 gig hooked up to your GP32.. And its feasable as well - compared to a 128SMC

 

[crazeeplaya]

Not really that good an idea for a handheld console though is it.

Also you would need an external power supply as 2AA bateries could not power a harddisk.

In short, there is no way this is ever going to happen

 

[Bobsonsirjonny]

I didn't suggest for one second that the GP32 could power the drive. The drive has its own external power supply - its portable, it fits in my pocket. If the USB port only acts as a slave, surely you would need is an interface to go between the drive and the USB port to control it. At the moment the expansion port may only be used for wireless connection - but it may have more bandwidth available. For example in the Amiga 1200 there were a couple of clock port headers - seemingly useless till someone managed to bodge a USB, and PCI controller onto it

Fair enough, you would need to be near a power source in order to use it - but this drive can run off your car battery. What if your in a hotel etc..

Tech spec's need to be obtained.

 

[Bobsonsirjonny]

You could have some kind of adaptor to go through the SMC slot to USB to the drive (kinda using the SMC slot like some glorified PCMCIA) there would be a bandwidth problem though. You may be able to make use of the bandwith throught the EXT. Port. I mean the GP32 can play DivX stuff, and MP3. Albeit low bandwidth, but still acceptable. I spoke to my boss and one of the other guys I work with, they said in theory there is no reason why it shouldn't work, but that they would need more info on the hardware to say.

 

[r0lf]

IIRC (and i usually don't), the Ext port has I2C, rs232, and / or JTAG interfaces. none of these lend themselves to PCMCIA or IDE connections. Adapting them to USB wouldnt be out of the question, but you still need someone fairly uber to write the software.

I don't wanna discount the idea at all, it's all possible, I just doubt it's possible for homebrew peoples like us.

The 'i wanna plug other stuff into my GP32' topic has been thrashed out here a number of times. Each time someone points out the difficulties for that approach. I just can't wait till someone proves us all wrong

Actually, has anyone considered connecting one of those little tiny PC mobos up. I'm sure that'd work, and some of them have usb, run on batterys and could be described as 'small' ? then we wouldnt have to bother adapting stuff

 

[Bobsonsirjonny]

Hmmm so its feasable. I cant code for toffee, but it could be a cool project to have a fiddle with. I mean there are enough people on here with varying degrees of experience for different ideas and solutions to be exchanged

 

[Tobriand]

Actually, the GP32 USB port does act as unpowered master. But adapting USB master to IDE master might be awkward. Impossible for me, of course, but generally awkward methinks anyway...

 

[Bobsonsirjonny]

The Harddisk is a LaCie Pocket drive. As far as I know its not IDE, its a custom drive, that fits in your pocket. It has USB, and Firewire, and a power conector. Its a Unit in itself.

Great to hear that the GP32 USB adaptor acts as a master!!! All that would be required then is some driver

What file system does the GP32 use, what is it compatible with... B)

 

[vodkabuddah]

Check this out - I bought one a month ago....

http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/catalog/d...lt.php?cPath=33

It's called a Tripper 2 - basically it's a portable hard-disk (can swap for whatever capacity you want) and comes with USB 2 port to connect to your PC AND has inbuilt Compact Flash Reader

It doesnt stop there though, you can also WRITE to compact flash !!

I gotta a 60Gig disk in mine, use it with SMC to Compact Flash adaptor and got a truly portable hard disk solution. I got all the emulators (SNES, ATARI, GBoy etc) with plenty of moviepark DivX's - all available for downloading to my 128Meg SMC. Not only that, cause I've gotta truly portable disk solution, I'm abale to encode my moviepark files to high quality and can then split the film over 2 or 3 SMCs and watch them with a few clicks.

Where's the catch - none really, only downside of the Tripper that I've found is battery life - lasts around 3 to 4 hours between recharges. Not really a problem, unless you're doing loadsa swapping etc. but lasts plenty long enough to get to a plug socket and recharge.

By the way, those of you with PDAs, Digi cameras etc. that use some form of Smart Media - you can use those aswell with the correct adaptor. I take a lot of photos on my 256Meg Compact Flash - just download them to the Tripper, wipe the flash and away I go again. B)

So for those of you with an itch for more storage and have several Smart Media enabled devices, this bit of kit works really well and certainly comes in cheaper than buying 17 different cards.

vodkabuddah

 

[Fretzy]

I haven't looked too deeply into it, but the IBM Microdrives sure have the portability aspect covered. There are USB Microdrive readers out there, so maybe this is the way to go... of course the cost is a downfall

But man, how cool is a smartmedia sized 1GB HDD!

Microdrive Picture

 

[NiN^_^NiN]

Its possible to use compact flash on the serial port by using a ide to flash adapter then serial to ide adapter but its still a waste of time

there are smc to compact flash adapters and the way that works is putting the smc pins to the cf pinout so you might be able to do that in reverse then you can have compact flash as the SMC.

h34r: