Now that memory limitations are being addressed by several
upgrade possibilities, I thought it would be interesting to try
to eliminate another limitation: transfer speed.

Currently, there is no need to fit USB2, or 100 mbit ethernet
into the player, as the IDE controller is the bottleneck now.

But what if we could fit an USB2 to IDE controller, like the ones
used in external harddisk cases, into the player. It would turn
the player into a generic mass storage device, giving direct
access to the filesystem, without going through the player's
CPU and IDE. This kind of access may well be 10
times as fast as going through the player hardware.

One would have to use mp3tofid to synchronize the data in
the internally used format.

But I'm not sure about the following:
- can a second IDE controller be connected to the existing IDE bus,
assuming only one controller is powered?
- can a USB2 to IDE controller address multiple drives ?
- could a USB2 to IDE controller power multiple drives ?
- could we use the existing USB connector ?

Just an idea.

Pim

I'm not sure that this is possible.. wrong sex kind of thing.

The player has a host->IDE interface, which is the opposite of what one wants when connecting to a USB2->IDE interface.

Cheers

Yeah, we would have two hosts connecting to the same IDE drives.
I know this is possible with SCSI. Maybe not the same way with IDE,
but maybe it is possible if only one host controller is powered up.

You would either power the player IDE controller through the
usual power connectors, or the USB IDE controller through
the USB bus.

It would be of no use if we would have to open the player,
and switching mechanically isn't very nice either if possible
at all.

Pim