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Home / I-Opener Areas / I-Opener Technical Info Reference (MODERATED) Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk...

Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk... (modified 0 times) darkstar It looks like the V3s can boot from an appropriately constructed disk image only if the Sandisk is not present during the BIOS probe. Are there any EEs here who have any ideas about how to temporarily disable it? It looks like the power on the flash chip is the top pin on each side. Would grounding these be likely to work? 05-07-2000 12:27:39

RE:Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk... (modified 0 times) NoNo If you ground a Vcc power pin, you will short out the power. You will burn out something, even if it is just a fuse. There IS a surface mount fuse in there somewhere.... What you need to do is to open the 5 volts trace. Perhaps solder a header so you can add/remove power at will. A better solution would be to find a way to disable the Sandisk Controller. As soon as I have my new iOpener I will be looking into this. My wife has my V-1 and will NOT give it back for experimentation. Bummer. There is technical documentation, including pinouts, etc, for the Sandisk chipset at http://www6.ewebcity.com/iopener/ 05-07-2000 13:09:26

RE:Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk... (modified 0 times) darkstar Thanks, I won't do that :). I'm still waiting for mine, so I can't try anything yet either. Adding a header sounds like it might not be too difficult and could actually be useful for some people (if you have a drive attached and want to also attach a CD-ROM, perhaps temporarily to install software). I did find more detailed docs at http://www.sandisk.com/download/FCSProdMan.pdf 05-08-2000 10:02:11

RE:Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk... (modified 0 times) V3 Hacker I just looked at the docs (http://www.sandisk.com/download/FCSProdMan.pdf) and have some thoughts. It has at least 5 seperate Vdd supply pins, so this will not be easy to disable. 1> Pin 64 is labled TEST, if you put it in test mode it might disable it. 2> Pin 36 is labled RESET, if you keep it high IE continuous reset it might disable it. 3> Pin 40 is labled OI, selects IDE or PCMCIA mode, if you take it out of ATA IDE mode it might disable it. 4> If you play with the the configuration options, you should be able to set it up as a secondary controller. Larry 05-08-2000 23:10:21

RE:Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk... (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile There are a few other pins of interest on the Flash ChipSet Controller Pinout (BTW, the links directly to sandisk's docs don't work anymore). Pin 55: "CS" is typically "chip select"... Typically this means: if it's set Low, it would cause the chip to ignore any data sent to it (including R/W commands, etc.). Also, there's CSEL, pin 23, which may be the same thing... odd that it has two. I've been studying/working with IDE in some other projects, and there's some excellent info here: http://www.ent.ohiou.edu/~welker/ide.txt Eric 12-13-2001 03:25:21

RE:Temporarily Disabling the Sandisk... (modified 0 times) Finatronics Profile Surface mount unsoldering.... I figured out about the only way I can do it, with my shaky hands and fat-tipped soldering iron. (actually, it's pretty fine tipped, except compared to the size of the pins) Get some Wire-Wrapping wire. I'm using 30AWG, which is almost too large, but works. strip about 1/2in from one end. Fold the end in half to make a U shaped hook. The length of the hook can only be as long as the height from the board to where the pin enters the chip. What you want to do is insert the hooked end next to the pin to be removed (the wire should be perpendicular to the board, as should the hook). Once it's in, turn the wire around, so the hook wraps around the back of the pin to be removed. Now rotate the wire downward, so the hook surrounds the pin on either side. Once this is accomplished, the wire hook will be wrapped around the back of the pin to remove. apply the soldering iron to the wire-wrapping wire, touching both sides of the hook and pull slightly on the wire. Once it heats up enough, the hook will pull the pin right out! Hope this helps! Eric 12-13-2001 04:13:32

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