found this by accident
found this by accident
A few years back (2003, I think), a friend wanted to make an IDE controller for a PC. His dream was to make something like a SUPER PCjr. He was using either a Tandy 1000A or SX to do his testing, so as not to risk his PCjr. I got interested because my favorite PC has always been the Tandy 1000TX. I hoped if something turned up I could use it in my TX, also. He had some kind of rig in his Tandy that allowed him to use an IDE, but it only gave him around half of the rated capacity. As I recall, he had a 830mb hard drive that gave him about 400mb with his adapter.
Not too bad, I thought... much better than the 42mb I'd "shoehorned" into my TX! Just over a month later, John was dead. His family junked everything he'd worked on in an effort to assuage their grief.
Running across this thread brought my previous hopes back into focus. Unfortunately, my eyesight is no longer very good. I now run my TX with an 8-bit vga adapter card, and the biggest monitor I could find. I would dearly love to buy 2 or 3 of these XT class IDE cards (I've always believe in having spares of critical parts). They would have to be completely finished (soldered, flashed, etc) as I'd have trouble doing anything more than just installing it.
Sounds to me as though this would make a nearly perfect "hardcard" using a 2 1/2 inch IDE drive. I think the reduction in power consumption would help the longevity of any Tandy 1000-class machine.
thanks
Mike H