How to: hook up a hard drive to your Nintendo DS

by Conrad Quilty-Harper, posted Sep 10th 2006 at 5:15PM

We'll forever be in awe of people like Alexei Karpenko, a modder who one day "decided to do a quick IDE to GBAMP hack". That's right -- as a casual aside, Alexei hooked up a hard drive to his Nintendo DS via a GameBoy cartridge originally designed to play short movies from a CompactFlash card. The hack is apparently possible due to similarities between the CF interface and that of standard IDE hard drives: Alexei simply soldered the correct pins onto a 40GB disk and connected it to a 11.1 volt battery and 5 volt DC-to-DC converter. As you can see, the unwieldy setup isn't much of a PSP rival (remember, that second "P" stands for portable), but the mere fact that it's at all possible will undoubtedly impress your inner geek.

Filed under: Gaming

Tags: Alexei Karpenko, AlexeiKarpenko, CF, CompactFlash, GBAMP, Hack, IDE, Mod, NDS, Nintendo DS, NintendoDs

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

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Liam Daly @ Sep 10th 2006 5:19PM

Nice, now they need to somehow do that for PSP :D

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mitch @ Sep 10th 2006 5:27PM

You might recognize Alexei Karpenko as the hacker who drafted and created the original PassMe device. He's been doing these crazy experiments for months now.

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marq @ Sep 10th 2006 5:50PM

Hey look at how useful that is!

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Zallman @ Sep 10th 2006 6:25PM

Love it.. Keep up the good hax1ng !

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Anthony @ Sep 10th 2006 7:22PM

It may not be very useful... but that is awesome!

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s00pcan @ Sep 10th 2006 8:00PM

I bet he wishes the cable was longer :P

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Jared C. @ Sep 10th 2006 8:02PM

I am not familiar with the DS interface. What is possible with the addition of a hdd?

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Abe @ Sep 10th 2006 8:45PM

err...not too much really (at Jared C.)
this was mostly for fun I assume

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DarkFader @ Sep 10th 2006 9:26PM

Great! But what would be next great step in DS hackworld? Ideas please!

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Pikapeepeekachu @ Sep 10th 2006 11:43PM

DarkFader: Wii.

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James Brown @ Sep 11th 2006 4:06AM

I fail to understand the general awe expressed in the article. For all purposes CF interface is IDE - it is simply a rewiring job - it can hardly be called a hack.

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Invincibul @ Sep 11th 2006 12:23PM

Wish this hack comes out for the PSP, think of all the possiblities, Keep HDD in back pack, Keep all your mp3 collection+Movie collection in 3gp or mp4+Homebrew games+Maps for GPS+Illegal Game ROMs+Most of my Pics.

Please, please bring this to the PSP!

Invincibul,
http://www.gamebot.co.nr ,
http://tech.jhatkaa.com .

Neutral

Nick @ Sep 11th 2006 1:06PM

Um, Engadget, don't you mean "AC-to-DC" converter instead of "DC-to-DC"?

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bogphanny @ Sep 11th 2006 11:12PM

@Nick: RTFA
"I used a 11.1V li-poly battery and a DC-DC converter to bring the voltage down to 5V."

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HockeyInJune @ Sep 12th 2006 6:01PM

Was he able to run an OS on the DS?

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Andy @ Dec 12th 2006 2:20PM

that is reelly cool . could you use that to make svae from that DS camera hack that woould be awsome!!! ;)

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