gerrydoire
Veteran Member
- Joined
- Aug 25, 2008
- Messages
- 1,145
Hi! Good news! I finished assembly of the XT-IDE prototype. Installed the ICs, found a cable and a couple of IDE hard drives for testing. Thursday I start the point to point wring out to verify all the connections and then onto live testing. The prototype is too wide to fit in a single slot so it either uses a couple of slots or has to be on an ISA bus extender. Hopefully my 8 bit ISA bus extender will be here soon.
The point to point wring out usually takes a lot less time than the assembly. Building the prototype turned out to be more complex and time consuming than I originally estimated. It is more complex than it looks, that is for sure.
One thing we are finding on the N8VEM project with the Disk IO board is that the IDE "standard" is not very standardized. There are many variations of drives and controllers and not all IDE devices are interchangeable. Some work, some don't, and its not clear why.
One thing is for sure though, I suspect this project is in for the same rude surprise when we finally move to integration and software testing. Be prepared for some ugly IDE compatibility issues to surface. I'll bet that only a subset of IDE devices are going to work with the device, at least at first. So we'll see how this turns out. I am very glad we are prototyping this before investing in a manufactured PCB.
Thanks and have a nice day!
Andrew Lynch
Wouldn't the best option of compatibility for 8bit IDE be the ability to use CF cards?