ATAboy bridges old IDE drives to the 21st century with Open Source USB host bridge — powered by a Raspberry Pi RP2350 and with custom "Award" BIOS menu

News
By published

Open source solution for working with legacy IDE drives

ATAboy
(Image credit: Pexels / JJ Dasher)

If you've got a plethora of older IDE (PATA) hard drives that you need to run data recovery, backup, or for the fun of running retro hardware, then your biggest issue is connecting to a more modern system. JJ Dasher, from JJ's Messy Bench, has created ATAboy, an open source IDE to USB interface designed specifically for older hard disks.

The "Award" influenced BIOS screen is a sheer joy to behold, spoken as a person who was tinkering with 486 PCs back in the 1990s. The interface is simple, clean, and heavily nostalgic.

Image 1 of 2
ATAboy
(Image credit: JJ Dasher)

On the PCB we have the Raspberry Pi RP2350 SoC (System on Chip) as used in the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and the Pico 2W. This potent dual core Arm CPU runs at 250MHz, and the onboard GPIO handles the IDE to USB interface. The PCB was designed using KiCad, a popular open source CAD application.

ATAboy seems like a dream come true for those of us who enjoy using older PCs. It is compatible with CHS and LBA-type IDE disks, but it is geared more towards CHS. If you want to preserve an old drive, create an image, or simply move files to your modern PC, then ATAboy could be the tool for you. For some of the legacy disks, you will need to experiment with manually configuring the interface, usually because of unusual geometries.

If you want to buy one, JJ has them for sale for $50 or you can get the schematics and bill of materials (BOM) from JJ's GitHub repo to build your own. There, you can also find the latest firmware. You can also find a 3D printable case, designed using FreeCAD, to keep your ATAboy safe from harm. You could print this on one of the best 3D printers or even one of the best budget 3D printers.

Google Preferred Source

Follow 3DTested on Google News, or add us as a preferred source, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.

Les Pounder
Les Pounder
2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ezst036
    Pretty cool but it might just be easier and also cheaper to just get a pcie IDE adapter. Especially if you need two or more ports then the math is way more favorable.

    Https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61InKSnit3S.jpg
    Reply
  • wakuwaku
    ezst036 said:
    Pretty cool but it might just be easier and also cheaper to just get a pcie IDE adapter. Especially if you need two or more ports then the math is way more favorable.

    Https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61InKSnit3S.jpg
    You will need to hunt down specific models that have specific controllers that support CHS, something that the ATABoy explicitly advertises. Many generic pcie IDE cards lack such information. Most of them, and USB based ones, reportedly only support LBA. Such cards may also be more expensive due to being rare, or maybe they're not sold anymore and you need to get them used, or from old new stock on ebay of questionable quality. (Go ahead and Google for them, I tried)

    I don't know why you would call it easy? Hunting down a very specific card, opening up your PC, pray you have a relatively older platform with more lanes and extra pcie slots, plug them in, and then go down driver and/or bios hell...is that easy?

    The idea of USB is that you plug it in and it just works. Any being USB 1.1 means theres a high chance it just works with really old USB capable computers. Not to mention you do not need a desktop PC with accessible, enough pcie lanes and slots to use it. You can't use them pcie cards in a laptop can you?

    You need multiple ports, just buy more ATABoys? I guarantee most Desktop PCs have way more USB ports than pcie slots, even if you count M.2.
    Reply