JJ Dasher's ATAboy Connects Even the Oldest of IDE Hard Drives to Modern Systems via USB

Vintage computing enthusiast JJ Dasher has released an open-hardware board designed to connect classic Integrated Drive Electronics (IDE)/Parallel Advanced Technology Attachment (PATA) storage devices to modern systems via USB: the ATAboy.

"ATAboy is designed for retro computing enthusiasts, data recovery experts, and archivists. Read and write the oldest of IDE hard drives, without the need for an 'in-between' vintage computer," Dasher explains of the device. "ATAboy is a user-friendly bridge that allows classic IDE (PATA) hard drives to be connected to a modern computer over USB as a standard USB Mass Storage device. While cheap, modern adapters usually only work with newer 'LBA' [Logical Block Addressing] type drives, ATAboy works all the way back to the earliest CHS [Cylinder Head Sector] only, PIO [Programmed Input/Output] Mode 0, ATA [Advanced Technology Attachment] disks. (It will also work with newer LBA type IDE disks, but that's not really what it's designed for.)"

While modern mainstream computing has standarized on serial ATA (SATA) for spinning-rust and mid-range solid-state drives (SSDs) and Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) for higher-performance SSDs, with the server sector opting for Serial Attached SCSI (SAS), computer storage was once dominated by IDE. Developed by Western Digital and Compaq in 1986 as the AT Bus Attachment and designed for use with IBM PC/ATs and compatibles, IDE did away with the need for a dedicated hard drive controller card by integrated the control electronics direction on the drive. Each IDE channel supports two drives, a primary and secondary, on a single 40-pin ribbon cable.

The launch of the faster SATA in 2003 saw motherboard makers remove IDE support, and today it's something you'll only find on specialist devices. Low-cost USB adapters are readily available, but they only support the most modern version of IDE hard drives — whereas Dasher's ATAboy can handle drives going all the way back to the original models that needed to be addressed based on the number of cylinders, read/write heads, and sectors available.

The Raspberry Pi RP2350-based ATAboy connects to any modern USB Mass Storage-compatible system, and presents two interfaces: the storage device itself and a serial connection for configuration, which uses a text-based user interface (TUI) inspired by the classic Award Software BIOS. "Performance is significantly slower than modern USB to IDE bridges," Dasher admits. "We're working over USB 1.1 for now. This can cause long mount times, especially in Windows if the disk has file system weirdness."

Hardware design files and source code are available in the project's GitHub repository under the weakly reciprocal variant of the CERN Open Hardware License 2 and GNU General Public License 3 respectively; assembled boards are available to order from Dasher's Obsolete Tech at $49.99.