Transcend TS32GSSD25S-M SATA drive with IDE service port?

[Per Hansson]

Hi, I bought this Transcend TS32GSSD25S-M SATA SSD over 8 years ago to have a silent drive in my firewall.
It's super slow and by reading reviews I got the impression that it was based on a JMicron JMF601A.
However I was curious and disassembled it a few days ago and found something very surprising inside:
The "SSD controller" is made by Silicon Motion: SM223TF AC
Why I put it within quotes is because it's actually a Compact Flash controller primarily, hence native IDE.
For this there is a bridge chip: JMicron JM20330 to convert it to SATA.
The NAND is Samsung 804 K9HBG08U1M

What surprised me was the hidden female IDE port inside!
I bought a IDE cable with one male end so I could try to hook it up to a system I have.
But it hardlocks when I try to boot that system though.
Anyone got any details on this thing?
Would be fun to try to upgrade the firmware, I've found several tools here:
http://www.usbdev.ru/files/smi/

I also found a datasheet that says the SM2232 controller is pin compatible, I wonder if the SM2232EN might be too

Attachments

[mr_spokk]

Maby the "Ide port" is a jtag interface?

[Per Hansson]

It ohms out correctly as an IDE port, and it would be sensible seeing as that is what the SM233 chip supports...
There is also 5v on pins 41 & 42 when the drive is powered via SATA.

[fzabkar]

The IDE port looks like a 44-pin mobile type.

http://pinoutguide.com/HD/Ata44Internal_pinout.shtml

Edit: Sorry, I see that the OP has already confirmed this.

[fzabkar]

I bought a IDE cable with one male end so I could try to hook it up to a system I have. But it hardlocks when I try to boot that system though.

Maybe you need to ensure that the JM20330 remains "quiet" so that there is no contention for the IDE port. That is, try to place its IDE port in a hi-Z state.

If crystal X1 is not shared by the flash controller, then perhaps you could simply defeat (short?) the crystal.

[fzabkar]

It would appear that the SM223TF does not require an external oscillator, so it seems that X1 is associated with the JM20330.

Transcend 1" SSD TS16GSSD10-M:
http://www.hjreggel.net/hdtechdat/hd-transcend.html

Silicon Motion SM223TF
Samsung K9HBG08U1A-PCB0

JM20330, JMicron, Serial ATA Bridge Chip, 3.3V & 1.8V, 25MHz Reference Clock, Product Brief:
http://www.go-gddq.com/downlocal/J/JM20330.pdf

[Per Hansson]

Interesting thought, I tried to short the XTAL by shorting pins 22 & 23 on the JM20330 together but it still hung in the same way.
The cable I'm using now is the the male/female flat cable pictured below.
I have also ordered a 44-pin header so I will be able to hook it to some different adapters I have.
Right now I can only plug it in to my Watchguard Firebox X700 which has a 44-pin IDE interface.

Attachments

JM20330-datasheet-pinout.gif (25.93 KiB) Viewed 13660 times

s-l1600.gif (71.67 KiB) Viewed 13660 times

s-l1600.jpg (19.3 KiB) Viewed 13660 times

[Per Hansson]

On pin 16 of the JM20330 is a Reset pin.
This goes to pad R29 which is unpopulated.
It's then tied to GND (pin 1 of the IDE connector)
I tried to just bridge it but then the system does not POST at all.

[Per Hansson]

The system I'm using for testing seems to have a buggy BIOS.
It boots with a 4GB CF card, but with a 32GB Transcend CF card it hangs just the same.
A 80GB 3.5" IDE harddrive is fine though so I don't know what to think.

The 44-pin and 3.5" IDE port seems to be wired to the secondary IDE channel.
And the CF slot seems to be the wired to the primary IDE channel.

Let's see what happens next week when I hopefully receive the 44-pin adapter and can use some other systems for testing...

[fzabkar]

On pin 16 of the JM20330 is a Reset pin.
This goes to pad R29 which is unpopulated.
It's then tied to GND (pin 1 of the IDE connector)
I tried to just bridge it but then the system does not POST at all.

Pin #1 of the IDE connector should be /RESET. This signal is driven by the host controller (or by the bridge?). Instead I would be looking at pin #17 (/POR) of the JM20330. This appears to be a Power On Reset input to the bridge.

[fzabkar]

Here is the JM20330 datasheet:
http://web.archive.org/web/20141117163146/http://beyondwind.duckdns.org/wp-uploads/2014/02/JM20330_Spec_Rev.-2.3.pdf

[mr_spokk]

It ohms out correctly as an IDE port, and it would be sensible seeing as that is what the SM233 chip supports...
There is also 5v on pins 41 & 42 when the drive is powered via SATA.

[Per Hansson]

I got the 44-pin header today so I could test the SSD on some more mainboards with 3.5" IDE headers using a 2.5" > 3.5" adapter.
It's the same thing though, using a FIC FA15T it hung for a long time then continued without recognizing the SSD.
And with a K8N Neo4-F it hung forever like with the Watchguard Firebox.

I then decided to desolder resistor R20 which is for pin 17 #POR which fzabkar mentioned above.
Strangely there was no change in behavior, the drive also still works with SATA so not sure what's up with that...
I could measure 3.3v on both pads to ground after removing the resistor. (And before as well for that matter).