Photos From Stephen Hill

These pictures show my version of Cheuk Poon's USB hookup.

I've basically done the same thing. Instead of using a relay to control power to the drive, I've just put in a switch. This controls whether power to the hard drive comes from the mp3 player or the USB adapter. The other lines in the ribbon cable are always connected to both the player and the adapter. Problems could occur if both of them have power. The switch prevents the power from one from getting to the other.

I cut the trace on the adapter card connecting to pins 41 and 42 (data and motor 5v lines). The center of the SPDT switch connects to the pins on the card (and therefore directly to the hard drive). One side of the switch goes to the trace that I cut (on the side of the cut away from the drive connection). The other side of the switch is connected to the wires in the ribbon cable coming from the player board.

The switch is on the front panel of the box housing the board (this is a temporary box until I figure out what I'm going to put it in). The front panel also has 6 switches duplicating the ones on the board. Originally, I hadn't planned on including these but the USB adapter board covers up the switches on the player.

The back panel shows the opening for the USB connection.

The setup is working very well. I want to thank Cheuk Poon for the information and inspiration.

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