small hardware ram drive

[tech_dragon]

I am trying to build a small "ram drive" that will plug into an IDE cable and be seen by the computer as a harddrive. my idea is to use a few old 72 pin ram chips dropped into sockets on the board. I was thinking of using 8 slots. 4 Megs per slot. I also know I am going have to have circutry inbetween the IDE port and the RAM sockets. It will need to tell the Bios that there is a 32 MB harddrive hooked up. preferably it can be switched master/slave but not necisarily. I am not worried about dataloss due to power loss as this is for temp files. any ideas on this are welcome.
Thank you.

 

[tansis]

You could try bouncing this idea off the MSN group "Hardware Junkies"

This is something a few computer tech's have recomended, running windows in ram for net applications, kills cookies , spyware and viruses dead. no special software required that slows system down

 

[tech_dragon]

thanks for the idea

thank you for the idea on anther place to discuss this idea, at this point I dont want to make windows fit into it however that could be in idea for a bigger version of it if it with a battery backup or something along those lines. at this point I am mainly after getting the small one working to hold temp files.
thanks again.

 

[Nostrafus]

you could possibly get an adapter to a 128 MB smartcard to fit an IDE cable, though I don't know if it'll be picked up by windows, the FAT (File Allocation Table) probably isn't formatted to windows format.

 

[tech_dragon]

want it to be seen as a harddrive

As I stated before I would like for this device to be seen by the bios even as a harddrive. If anyone has schematics for any harddrives or know any of the signals the "HD" would need to send out to tell the system that it is a harddrive of X size it would be greatly appreatiated. Thank you.

 

[chubs1646]

a good start

there is a company on the web that makes some solid state hard drives as well as providing the chips to make one yourself if you wish.
www.m-sys.com/
excellent website. there chips are more or less designed to be hard drives and the connection between ide and chip would require little to no glue.

 

[DirtyLude]

I know Compact Flash has an IDE access mode.

Arma Design has a development board that you can access the Compact Flash card directly through an IDE cable OR with a PIC 16f877.

I'm trying to reproduce the PIC access to the CF card myself, for datalogger storage, but it looks like direct connect to IDE is pretty simple.

 

[sbayeta]

I am trying to build a small "ram drive" that will plug into an IDE cable and be seen by the computer as a harddrive. my idea is to use a few old 72 pin ram chips dropped into sockets on the board. I was thinking of using 8 slots. 4 Megs per slot. I also know I am going have to have circutry inbetween the IDE port and the RAM sockets. It will need to tell the Bios that there is a 32 MB harddrive hooked up. preferably it can be switched master/slave but not necisarily. I am not worried about dataloss due to power loss as this is for temp files. any ideas on this are welcome.
Thank you.

Try this.

**broken link removed**