On Mon, 2006-03-13 at 13:55 -0800, Rob Robson wrote:
> I'm having difficulty finding a practical online resource that can bridge a 
> gap in my understanding of how an ATA drive's file contents are reconciled 
> to the drive's physical organization.  Using a PIC 18F452 setup (programmed 
> in ASM) I can read a drive's status register and determine that the drive is 
> present and ready, but I'm not sure how to obtain data from the MBR, or how 
> to point the drive to a particular cluster and read its contents.  Googling 
> pulls up all kinds of information regarding things like the contents of the 
> boot sector and the FAT , but I'm at a loss to know how it boils down to 
> which registers to load and which hardware lines to control in order to 
> locate and read these contents.  I have found drafts of the ATA specs, but 
> it's a huge document.  Has someone encountered a practical hardware-oriented 
> ATA tutorial?

Hello Rob,

My carmon project does pretty much what you describe. Note that the
compact flash interface can be used in a mode which is identical to
standard ATA connections, my schematic even has the IDE pinout.

http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/carmon

TTYL
 

-----------------------------
Herbert's PIC Stuff:
http://repatch.dyndns.org:8383/pic_stuff/

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