One of the best upgrades any computer can receive is the replacement of its hard drive with a solid-state drive. Even the most economical laptops on the market already come with an SSD, but older systems need a bit more help. YouTuber dosdude1 decided to take that help to the extreme, building an SSD from scratch with a 2.5-inch IDE interface for an old Mac Mini, and programming its firmware...
The situation is so common that it has already reached meme status on the web: What is the best thing we can do for a laptop from the past decade with 4 GB of RAM? The answer is to install an SSD, of course. With an average price of 20 euros for 240 gigabytes, it's an upgrade not worth thinking twice about. However, problems arise when we find older systems that lack a SATA interface, or use something more exotic, so to speak.
The market offers a wide variety of adapters and converters for SSDs, but dosdude1 on YouTube is not known for following that path. In fact, he prefers to build SSDs from scratch, soldering one component at a time and programming the firmware. The best part is that his projects are open source: anyone interested can order the PCBs from services like PCBWay, purchase the components, and download the necessary software.
How to build an SSD with an IDE interface
If we explore "dosdude1"'s channel, we'll quickly see that this is not his first adventure. A couple of months ago he built a 1.8-inch ZIF IDE SSD, and this project is his evolutionary leap, adopting a 2.5-inch IDE format. The key piece of the SSD is its controller: "dosdude1" indicates that the entire design is based on the Silicon Motion SM2236, and when choosing NAND chips, we must confirm the compatibility list using the tool "Mass Production Tool" or MPTool for that controller.
Needless to say, the process requires experience in micro-soldering, BGA soldering, and good heat control. In one section of the video, "dosdude1" had to remove the solder balls from the controller (several were missing, and the rest were of poor quality) and create new ones with solder paste and a stencil.
The last section of the video focuses on firmware flashing, with a very interesting detail: it's not possible to make a native IDE connection for this. The drive must go through an IDE to USB adapter to be recognized by the software, always under Windows. With its firmware ready, the SSD worked perfectly in a Mac Mini G4, but it's compatible with anything that relies on an IDE interface, whether 2.5 or 3.5 inches with an adapter.
