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Western Digital WDXT-150 XT IDE Controller Card

kc8eyt

Experienced Member
Joined
Aug 7, 2020
Messages
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I have a Western Digital WDXT-150 XT IDE 8bit controller card. Specs here:

http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/c/U-Z/20237.htm

I realize this card will only work with 8bit XT IDE drives like the Seagate ST351A/x.

Does anyone know if there was ever an IDE to CF adapter made to allow CF cards to work with this controller?

I have a Tandy hardcard with this controller and 20MB XT IDE drive but the drive is toast. It produces a dead short when connected to a power supply. Sourcing a new old stock XT IDE drive has been futile. I see plenty of used ST351A/X drives on eBay but I don't want to get stuck with a door stop (and they are priced way too high as well).
 
I doubt it. The XTIDE controller mostly maps 8 bit accesses to a 16 bit interface; all the smarts are in the CF card. More to the point, the I/O port maps look different.
 
I have a Tandy hardcard with this controller and 20MB XT IDE drive but the drive is toast. It produces a dead short when connected to a power supply.
If all the drive does is producing a short, it's probably not hard to repair.
 
If all the drive does is producing a short, it's probably not hard to repair.

I may take a deeper dive into the drive to see if I can find the issue. I did the basic look for things like cold solder joints or obvious burnt components but nothing stood out.
 
I wonder if someone could made an SD to IDE device that supports XTA? I assume that’s already doing some sort of translation.
 
It depends on the system. I’ve got a compuadd 810 that’s got integrated XTA but only has three ISA slots, and one is taken up by the OEM supplied VGA option. Most likely that would be all that’s ever needed, but an 8bit capable NIC and maybe a sound card too would then leave no room. I guess it just depends on the use case.

This box would make a good tweener, since it has VGA, supports HD 3.5” floppy drives, etc. in which case adding an XT-IDE would be fine. I guess you could still play old games with the speaker instead of a sound card.

But with a working XTA drive, I could load it up with silly hardware. The WD drive that was in it had seized up. I got it freed up but it still wouldn’t read or format. I found a seagate xta/ata switchable drive in an AT class machine, and it seems to be toast too.

Most likely I’ll end up going with your suggestion of an XT-IDE, but I’m dragging my feet first.
 
I may take a deeper dive into the drive to see if I can find the issue. I did the basic look for things like cold solder joints or obvious burnt components but nothing stood out.
Check all resistors and transistors that are connected to the shorted power rail. More often than not you don't see a shorted part by visual inspection.
 
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