SATA / SATA II for embedded system ?

Hello,

is it possible to use SATA / SATA II for embedded systems ? At the moment i 
have almost no info about SATA, so please forgive my general questions.

The SATA connector looks fairly simple (reference see below), only 4 data 
lines needed plus 3 ground pins.

Is it needed to use the high speed of 1,5 GBit/s or 3,0 GBit/s or can i use 
the much slower (in kHz area, which a uC can generate, e.g. by bit banging) 
?

Or are there easy to use controller, which can be connected to a uC (like 
SPI, or an 8 + x bit interface) of an embedded system and SATA HD on the 
other side ?

Remark: No project behind at the moment. I want to use the SATA only because 
of simple wiring (instead of P-ATA) and big space on HD.

Is it worth buying the specification (ok, looks to be cheap compared to 
other spec...), or do i immediately see, that i can forget my project, 
because it is not possible ?

Is http://www.sata-io.org the official page for SATA / SATA II 
specifications, or are there different ones ?

I at least found the pinout on
http://pinouts.ws/serial-ata-sata-pinout.html

The spec can be bought for less money (25 USD) at
https://www.sata-io.org/secure/spec_download.asp

Regards,

        Martin

Martin Maurer wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> is it possible to use SATA / SATA II for embedded systems ? At the moment i 
> have almost no info about SATA, so please forgive my general questions.
> 
> The SATA connector looks fairly simple (reference see below), only 4 data 
> lines needed plus 3 ground pins.
> 
> Is it needed to use the high speed of 1,5 GBit/s or 3,0 GBit/s or can i use 
> the much slower (in kHz area, which a uC can generate, e.g. by bit banging) 
> ?

Looking at this document, page 4...

https://www.sata-io.org/docs/Implementing%20SATA%20WP%203.02.pdf

It looks unlikely.  Much talk of packet framing,
CRC, 8b/10b encoding, etc.  Since there's no
separate clock line, I'd imagine that the timing
is tightly defined and would not work bit-banged.

> Or are there easy to use controller, which can be connected to a uC (like 
> SPI, or an 8 + x bit interface) of an embedded system and SATA HD on the 
> other side ?

Yes.  You can get a single chip IDE <> SATA
converter.  IDE is trivial to interface too.

> Remark: No project behind at the moment. I want to use the SATA only because 
> of simple wiring (instead of P-ATA) and big space on HD.
> 
> Is it worth buying the specification (ok, looks to be cheap compared to 
> other spec...), or do i immediately see, that i can forget my project, 
> because it is not possible ?
> 
> Is http://www.sata-io.org the official page for SATA / SATA II 
> specifications, or are there different ones ?
> 
> I at least found the pinout on
> http://pinouts.ws/serial-ata-sata-pinout.html
> 
> The spec can be bought for less money (25 USD) at
> https://www.sata-io.org/secure/spec_download.asp
> 
> Regards,
> 
>         Martin
> 
> 

On Sat, 23 Sep 2006 17:19:43 -0700, Jim Stewart <jstewart@jkmicro.com>
wrote:

>Martin Maurer wrote:
>> Hello,
>> 
>> is it possible to use SATA / SATA II for embedded systems ? At the moment i 
>> have almost no info about SATA, so please forgive my general questions.
>> 
>> The SATA connector looks fairly simple (reference see below), only 4 data 
>> lines needed plus 3 ground pins.
>> 
>> Is it needed to use the high speed of 1,5 GBit/s or 3,0 GBit/s or can i use 
>> the much slower (in kHz area, which a uC can generate, e.g. by bit banging) 
>> ?
>
>Looking at this document, page 4...
>
>https://www.sata-io.org/docs/Implementing%20SATA%20WP%203.02.pdf
>
>It looks unlikely.  Much talk of packet framing,
>CRC, 8b/10b encoding, etc.  Since there's no
>separate clock line, I'd imagine that the timing
>is tightly defined and would not work bit-banged.
>
>> Or are there easy to use controller, which can be connected to a uC (like 
>> SPI, or an 8 + x bit interface) of an embedded system and SATA HD on the 
>> other side ?
>
>Yes.  You can get a single chip IDE <> SATA
>converter.  IDE is trivial to interface too.

[Snipped]

I did a very quick search on google, and the impression I got that
these ICs are to connect an IDE device to a SATA controller. What the
OP need would be a converter that connects a SATA device to an IDE
controller.

Regards
  Anton Erasmus 

Hello Anton,

> I did a very quick search on google, and the impression I got that
> these ICs are to connect an IDE device to a SATA controller. What the
> OP need would be a converter that connects a SATA device to an IDE
> controller.

I at least found a few of these converters cheap on ebay.
One of them uses a Marvell 88i8030 on it (which seems to be an old but 
widely used chip).

Regards,

       Martin