• Please review our updated Terms and Rules here

XT-IDE Based "Hard Card"

A

ab0tj

Experienced Member
Joined
Mar 3, 2015
Messages
134
Location
Colorado, USA
Here's the other thing I have been working on lately... It's basically just Glitchworks' XT-IDE rev4 board, but in SMT and with a connector to mount a 44pin laptop hard drive directly to it. I know, I'm weird but I enjoy spinning rust...
More pictures to follow when the boards arrive.

Screenshot from 2024-07-17 15-21-32.png
 
Very nice!

It might be worthwhile to integrate an IDE-SATA bridge on the board, so that the more common (at this point) 2.5" SATA disks could be used.

- Alex
 
ajacocks said:
It might be worthwhile to integrate an IDE-SATA bridge on the board, so that the more common (at this point) 2.5" SATA disks could be used.
Click to expand...
Absolutely! Maybe I'll try making a IDE to SATA adapter first so I can make sure my skills are up to the task before integrating it all on one board
 
This appeals to me, all my old pre-pentium boxes are running a mix of spinning rust particles and swanky new silicon on IDE and SATA storage types.

My poor Tandy 1000A has lived the last 17 years with random HDDS packed in cardboard behind the floppy cage. I've been tempted to mill an aluminum bracket into a custom hardcard frame for my REV 1.1 XTIDE, this would simplify that.
 
I honestly didn't expect much interest in this, but good to know that there is. If the prototype works well I'm going to have to clean up the board (unless someone else wants to take the time to hand route it ;)) and then I can get boards out there for others to use.
Speaking of which, I'll have a couple of spare blank PCBs if anyone else is interested in building and testing the prototype as well.
 
Oh wow! I recently had a similar idea, but with a 3.5" drive and through-hole components on a full-length ISA card. I haven't gotten around to having the boards fabbed yet, but hope to soon.

XT-IDE-HardCard.jpg
 
One thing that'd I've always though would be cool for the XTIDE is to have a little bit of RAM on the card to map to UMB so that you can use the XTIDE's
UMB option without needing an additional memory card on an XT or PC.

Maybe have it mapped immediately after the ROM.

Using the UMB memory means the XTIDE doesn't have to steal 1KB from the top of conventional memory, which thwarts attempts at having > 700kb with a CGA card. I do have a six pack premium, but I can only map the memory to upper memory blocks after POST.

I have succesfully used my CGA with a hercules and mapped the XTIDE’s UMB address into the hercules memory, and it worked, I didn't keep it like that because it feels dodgy,
as the memory could be wiped at any time by the hercules.
 
Last edited:
Unknown_K said:
How expensive was it to make?
Click to expand...

Looks like about $42 in materials. Quite a bit more in time invested, haha.


chaozz said:
Will this work in a Sharp PC7100? A normal XT-IDE won't work in that machine ("The expansion chassis does not support any DMA mode operations which is required for hard disk operations such as the ones XTIDE would use.")

Someone is/was working on recreating the official expansion card: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/sharp-pc7000-7100-expansion-chassis-recreation.1239278/
Click to expand...

As far as I know, no XT-IDE board uses DMA. Just programmed IO and potentially interrupts. But maybe someone more familiar with the limitations of that machine could fill in the details here.
If a standard XT-IDE board won't work, this one won't either. It is a nearly exact clone of the Gitchworks XT-IDE board in the way it functions.

Edit: After reading the thread a little more, I think this is the problem: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?t...nsion-chassis-recreation.1239278/post-1269523
"I assume the ISA bus has all address lines and an external ROM, like the one of XTIDE, can be read. If so, then IMHO it is the BIOS of the Sharp that prohibits that an external ROM starts up."

This board does use an onboard ROM to initialize just like other XT-IDE boards, so no apparently this will not work.
 
Last edited:
Unknown_K said:
I figured one would work out well in a Tandy 1000 with no place to mount a HD.
Click to expand...
There is a place to mount a HD on the 1000SX but you have to get a little creative. There is a detachable stress bar atop the left side of chassis. What I did was take apart a standard HD mounting bracket and drill 2 holes in the stress bar and attach the HD mounts to said bar. The HD will then install vertically suspended. There is just enough clearance for most HD's. Easily attaches to your HD controller and saves a precious floppy slot.
 
chaozz said:
Will this work in a Sharp PC7100? A normal XT-IDE won't work in that machine ("The expansion chassis does not support any DMA mode operations which is required for hard disk operations such as the ones XTIDE would use.")

Someone is/was working on recreating the official expansion card: https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/sharp-pc7000-7100-expansion-chassis-recreation.1239278/
Click to expand...

The connector Sharp used for the Hardcard in the PC7100 does not have the full ISA bus of signals present, just enough to get the Hardcard working. So an XT-IDE based card won't work there.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top