MYIDE(tm)-INTERFACE.                          Back to index

           

(Updated 6-okt-2002)

-INTRODUCTION PAGE-

A harddisk attached to my Atari is something I always wanted. But spending more than 100 USD on some hardware was to much for me. So I designed and build my own interface. It started all in 1998 for a German Atari-club called Abbuc. The interface I had than was a 'cartridge' version and consists basicly of two chips, IDE-cable and a emptied Atari cartridge. It looked like this:

It only worked on Quantum Prodrive and sometimes on Seagate. They couldn't believe this thingy could drive a hardrive, so I wrote 3 articles for there magazine and some software. In the summer of 1999 I rewrote an ATARI800 operating-system for the next Abbuc-meeting. They were impressed that I could directly boot from harddisk and load 'rescue from fractilus' in 5 seconds flat!

After this first version I included a databus-isolator. This isolator solved all the problems I had with the first version. Now you can switch the harddrive on/off without crashing the system and almost every IDE-drive will work. The new version I have called MyIDEtm and is free for everybody to build.

At one time I had a harddrive mounted into a XF551-case. I have done this, because the XF551 has a standard 5&12Volts supply which can power a harddisk and it looks realy nice! The only thing you have to add is a cooler under the heatsink. If you don't, the heat-sink will become to hot and can damage your circuit. In a normal drive this wouldn't be a problem, because the drive-motor is off most of the time, but a harddrive is always spinning! Here are some pictures of my rebuild XF551-drive. 

     The XF551 power-circuit needs some extra cooling.

Now I have a 2.5" drive inside my 800XL. This only works when you power your Atari with 5 volts and plenty of amps. The standard power-supply will not do!

On the picture below you see a (opened) external MyIDE interface (with connector) nicely fitted in a Atari cartridge, I have build it for a dutch Atarian.

If you would like to see how a Atari with harddisk works. Have a look at these three short movie's I have made. In the first movie you see how I boot-up, go to Dos and do a directory from D2:. The second movie you see how I load a OBJ-file and than press fire to boot a 'diskette' from harddisk. On the third movie you see the drive-activity-led when I type D O S <enter> and 2 for a directory of D2: