SD -> SATA

[imgod22222]

I've never made a schematic before, nor have I ever recieved any formal education on circuitry. Everything is based on self-taught material that I took about a week teaching myself.

This whole idea is based off Team Twiizer's latest breakthrough on Wii Homebrew, enabling the Wii to read homebrew data through its front SD port. Until the scene has developed a way to access the Wii's USB ports, and make USB Mass Storage drivers, to me this sounds like a good idea that can work. Please give me your ideas.

Using information of SATA and SD pinouts from these two sites:
http://www.technick.net/public/code/...pinconhdd_sata
http://pinouts.ru/Memory/sdcard_pinout.shtml

I think it would be possible to do SD > SATA easily by using its slower SPI mode [if the wii allows it], using the SD's 7th pin having two wires leading from it, both having a diode, one facing one way(blocking negative charge), one the other (blocking positive charge), the first to SATA pin 6, the second to SATA Pin 5. While the same diode thing would work for SD pin 2 to SATA pins 2 and 3. With the possibility of having SD pin 1 [assuming its the sensing pin, to detect if there's something plugged in] connect to one of the SATA's grounds. Then power the SATA drive through its molex connectors, getting the molex's 5v from USB, and the molex's 12V from whatever (probably 120v house plug and a step-down transformer to 12v, so you can get a 3 prong plug and use the ground for the SATA's ground cables)

I've never made my own schematic before, but this sounds right to me. Thoughts from anyone experienced?

I think this demonstrates my ideas:

http://img142.imageshack.us/my.php?image=satasdfs6.png
(Sorry at my bad mspaint skills with a touch pad)

[LethalCorpse]

ehm....no. Sorry. Completely different signalling, different protocols, different speeds. It might be possible to get a SATA HDD to talk to an SD port, but you're going to have to start by teaching yourself signal theory, then data transfer protocols, then FPGA programming, then (advanced) PCB design, SMT fabrication, and a bunch of other things in between. Let us know how that works out for ya.

EDIT: and can we not turn this into another one of those three week navel gazing threads where we debate the theoretical possibility of such a device?

[Sempak]

Err, what's the deal with that power supply?

[LethalCorpse]

Ah yes, thank you sempak. Add power supply design/selection to the list of things you'd need to teach yourself.

[tin]

I think if it was that easy, someone would have already done it.
SD is a pretty basic interface, so you could probably (assuming there's not a USB to SD controller behind it) do a SATA protocol in software... But I think timing would be an issue.

So simple answer is, as LC said, no.

[Foliage]

Youd need some sort of PIC or FPGA to convert the protocols, even then I think you'd have massive speed differences and it wouldn't work.

Also that power supply makes no sense.

[imgod22222]

ahhh... okay. It was an idea. I guess when I get to college I'll have to take a class (or two) (or more )

Until then, I guess I'll stick to just reading schematics instead of attempting to write my own (and failing... horribly)

Thanks guys.

***Will try to learn those things mentioned, LC.
Starting my learning >>> Here. http://cnx.org/content/col10211/latest/

[Foliage]

Originally Posted by imgod22222

ahhh... okay. It was an idea. I guess when I get to college I'll have to take a class (or two) (or more )

Unless you are a good self learner then you'd almost need a degree to build the product you were thinking of doing. Need to learn to program, signal theory, circuit theory, how to design a PCB etc so on. Far from straight forward.