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Here's a mild gripe: I understand that 300h was chosen as the default for XT-IDE because that doesn't interfere with the address range used by the original IBM XT controller at 320h. The problem that exists with using 300h is it seems like a *lot* of ISA network cards rely on that address for...

I honestly don't know if it does or not, someone said it in another thread complaining about it being hard to find old threads about pre-PC IBM products even though there's now a category for those and I took it as read. Brass tacks, I think the allure of going with a tagging system instead is...

It was the Kaypro Robie that had those weird 2.6MB 192 TPI 5.25" floppy drives, right? That thing was such a roaring success I'd say Kaypro totally missed the boat by not making a jumbo model with these Hitachi 8" drives and a 19" CRT. I mean, who wouldn't want an 18" square black metal cube...

Oh, I got it. I just didn't really think the support for your argument against them was entirely sound, because the only forum you listed out as examples of how there was insufficient interest in said genre to bother dividing up that actually existed in its divided form of any amount of time...

Hey, there is a tiny subset of PC/XT software out there that won't work on anything but the original hard disk hardware; IE, some alternative operating systems and some applications that did nasty things to implement copy protection on hard disks. For that stuff only the original spinning rust...

But unless your option ROM has the flash routine embedded in it you’re basically 100% safe in a PC. ;) (To program the SST flash chips you specifically have to write two different specific addresses twice in a row *with no other reads nor writes in the sequence*, which implies heavily that your...

Is it this one, or some previous model? Like maybe the one in this thread? To me it looks like neither one of these cards has a data bus buffer for the card. The theoretical reason why this is a bad idea is it breaks something that would otherwise allow the card to properly detect if there...

Maybe that's a good argument for a flash chip like the SST39SF010. They use a "pound on the magic window" method of initiating write cycles that makes it a *lot* harder for something to hurt them accidentally.

Did you ever link what exact card you bought? (Or posted a detailed picture of it?) Conceptually there is very little to the XT-CF design, but depending on how the builder chooses to implement it and what shortcuts they might take the exact parts used can vary, a lot. So if you’re asking for...

For laughs I looked at the schematic they posted, and it appears to me that an attempt was made to allow the clock to work. I am no expert, not even remotely, when it comes to analog stuff, but the power supply circuitry of this thing seems... sketchy, to me. If I'm interpreting it correctly...

I'm going to stand up for the amateurs here by noting that the completely and utterly homemade expansion board dinguses I designed and built for my Tandy 1000s (that include a form of the XT-CF circuitry) have been working for four years now with zero problems. The closest thing to formal...

Doh, you're right. I got the impression that it could *only* handle the same 8-bit mini-backplane they were offering for the XT book. I guess the 16 bit extension is in fact present on a second header... although, FWIW, the only backplane they seem to be selling for it is the 8-bit one? So I...

Yay, back on topic. ;) Honestly, I'd say if you think you *might* be interested in it and have $200 fun bucks burning a hole in your pocket go for it. I would just advise going into it with your eyes wide open and with the understanding that it's a toy. (I mean, let's be straight here for the...

Road safety inspections and periodic emission control testing are things because the condition of your car doesn't just matter to you, it affects the safety and quality of life of everyone sharing the road with you. Even Ronald Reagan was sold on the wisdom of the old Russian proverb "Trust, but...

The *really* important thing you need to understand about the 6845 is what it *doesn’t* do. The chip generates sync/timing signals, spits out video RAM and character row addresses (there’s technically two separate sets of output address lines on it), and provides a couple other more obscure...

My kid takes a robotics course in her Middle school, and in that class she’s messing with computers at a roughly equal level to what we did with the Apple IIs back in the day so, yes, I disagree. Outside of computer/science class the kids need a reliable tool to do their other learning with, not...

In case it wasn’t obvious my comments about “why can’t we call *this* (several goofy examples) “double density” were mostly tongue in cheek and I’m not advocating for not calling the 1.2MB “high density”. But nonetheless I wanted to make a point here that technically a *lot* of floppy related...

We don’t live in the 80’s anymore. Most school computers didn’t even have hard disks, and if the kids were ever typing their homework in school “file management” meant not accidentally writing your book report to the AppleWorks disk instead of your data floppy. Kids these days are expected to...

I might be interested in #2, I think I have almost everything I need to populate this other than the chipset lying around. (I guess I need to see if my TL866II programmer can handle the PIC.)

It's not a Raspberry Pi, but if you want a disposable Linux laptop fast enough to emulate some classic games get yourself an "expired" Chromebook and hack an alternative BIOS onto it. As an example, the 2016-ish vintage Lenovo N42 based on the "Braswell" platform (these things were sold under...