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Did ever exist an 8-bit ISA card for ATA (IDE) hard drives?
- Thread starter Rauli
- Start date
Scali
Veteran Member
Could that limit not be broken by Dynamic Drive Overlay (DDO) software such as EZBIOS, as you would do on later AT+ machines?
Chuck(G)
25k Member
Recall that DDO's use their own low-level driver, not the BIOS one.
I doubt that the I/O port mappings directly correspond to a standard ATA setup. There's usually some sort of adaptation employed to handle the 16-bit to 8-bit translation. In particular, note the 2Kx8 SRAM--that's not part of a usual ATA adapter.
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Trixter
Veteran Member
Don't forget there were also many "hardcards" which marry the drive and controller onto the card. Does that qualify? Not sure if you can decouple them and wire up a different drive to the card, but there's an 8-bit IDE-ish HDD adapter for you.
The only period-appropriate 8-bit IDE adapter I own is a Silicon Valley ADP50. The rest are XT-IDE variants of various flavors.
The only period-appropriate 8-bit IDE adapter I own is a Silicon Valley ADP50. The rest are XT-IDE variants of various flavors.
Chuck(G)
25k Member
It depends. A lot of "hard cards" used 3.5" MFM/RLL drives with a bog-standard controller.
vwestlife
Veteran Member
And Tandy's "SmartDrive" hardcards used a Seagate ST-05X or an equivalent Western Digital IDE-XT interface card.
vwestlife
Veteran Member
Another period-appropriate card was the AccuLogic sIDE-1/16.
The sIDE-1 was an IDE-XT (XTA, 8-bit IDE, whatever you want to call it...) card while the sIDE-1/16 was to use regular IDE-AT / ATA drives with an XT-class machine.
framer
Veteran Member
I've got several other cards from that company including a 4HD floppy card in 8bit isa. I tried for years to find their 8bit IDE card but could never find one except at insane pricing.
Nice looking board...
framer