> Any references to this design?

There were people on the piclist who said they did this. Less than one
year ago. I do not have a direct reference. I have interfaced a Conner
laptop drive to a PIC16C64 in 1996 or 97. I cannot publish the design. I
did not use FAT(16) although I could have. I used a direct chained 'file
system' that did not require RAM to process a FAT in the host (PIC).  It
was easy once I got the register file issues cleared, and all the strange
delays (timeouts) required to catch drive errors, but I don't think I'd do
it again in assembly (see Xinu OS & other older Unix related file system
implementations). Imho FAT sux. In duplicate (for both copies of the FAT).

The project that interfaces a CF to a PIC is also pertinent to hard drives
because a CF is a ATA(PI) device with some extensions. I think that he
said that he used the 8 bit mode of the CF to save pins.

hope this helps,

Peter

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