DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy

There used to be laptops that used SATA to PATA bridge chips in them because PATA drives were cheaper for a while after SATA came out. They always had lots of compatibility problems. There is no reason to believe that the SATA to PATA bridge chips in these optical bay caddies are any different.

In 2014 any PATA drive is old, slow, and small. Even the cheapest, smallest new SATA drive will be a huge upgrade and will have zero compatibility problems.

 

I think I've found how to Slave-mod the Sunplus SPIF223A bridge, found in some PATA-SATA caddies. The information can be found on page 6 and 9, Section 7.3 in this pdf:
https://mega.co.nz/#!h5VxgLIS!rERjMhrJ8W-wBolpJrZUQjPOvTxmMHsgI8YHpXheCh0
The "ATA device mode" can be selected via 2 jumpers, IDE_JUMP0 (PIN #33) and IDE_JUMP1 (PIN #35) as follows:
0 0 - Master
1 0 - Slave
1 1 - Cable Select

If we check the picture of the Sunplus SPIF223A IDE-SATA bridge found in my optical bay caddy:
https://mega.co.nz/#!sgMjiD4Q!rLm8IYqsY7P6tm3GlV9kQ7Hgu10KVZUXKqeErj7R5D0
we notice that both PIN #33 and #35 are NOT jumpered (0 0), so the caddy is seen by the motherboard as set to Master (this is the default setting from the factory).

To enable Slave on this Sunplus chip, we should jumper PIN #33 (the lowermost pin on the right side of the chip). A simple copper wire soldered over that gap, as I marked in red, should do it ! One could even solder a small On/Off switch or a 2-pin jumper base over there in order to easily toggle Master/Slave, without having to disassemble the caddy every time

 

Thanks for the info, but what's the point of making drive in caddy slave?

 

The HP Compaq 2510p, for example, has a 1.8" IDE HDD bay and an IDE optical bay. If we use an IDE-SATA caddy in the optical bay, one of the bays must be set to Master and the other to Slave. Setting the 1.8" IDE HDD to Slave is not always a viable solution...

 

That is really unusual. Good work on figuring that out. Because it sounded strange, I had to double-check, but you are right. You can take a look here: http://notebookschematic.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/2510p.png The ICH8M southbridge only supports a single PATA interface, so in order for it to give it both to the internal drive and the optical bay, it would have to split them as master/slave. Looks like you are right on the money.

 

I purchased an IDE-SATA caddy to add a large SATA drive in place of the broken optical drive in my Sony VAIO VGN-FS830/W. Upon installation of the new SATA drive in the caddy, there was conflict between my existing IDE drive and the new SATA drive. After some troubleshooting I realized that both drives were set to MASTER.

I searched for a solution and found the posts by KrypteX. I determined that there were no jumpers on the Sunplus SPIF223A IDE-SATA controller on the pc board in my caddy so my second hard drive was set to MASTER. My original drive was set to MASTER as well. Obviously they did not work well together on what I assume is a single PATA interface.

To test I added a jumper to the original drive to make it SLAVE. The system recognized both drives properly. However, the jumper I used was physically too tall. It interfered with the chassis and I had to remove that jumper in order for all of the mounting screws to align.

So I soldered the wire jumper on pin 33 of the SPIF223A as KrypteX described. The system works as expected now! The original drive is MASTER and the new drive in the caddy is SLAVE. BIOS now sees both drives and will let me select the boot order between them.

In hindsight I could have waited a little longer and found a shorter jumper for the original drive. And I wonder if soldering another jumper to make the caddy drive CABLE-SELECT would have worked as well.

 

IDE is going the way of the dodo.

However, props for being creative and not afraid to fiddle with things to make it work. Besides, there's probably a few people who'll want to re purpose an old notebook for side projects, so this may still come in handy.