Odd 8-bit ISA CD-ROM interface?

[Tothwolf]

On Thu, 19 Oct 2006, Ethan Dicks wrote:

> I have this board here, marked "Reveal / Part No. 14-004-008" with an
> FCC ID if BEJGCD-R420B.  It is an 8-bit ISA card with a few jumpers (1-4
> and 1-9) and a single 40-pin IDC connector.
>
> From a bit of googling, it seems to be an ancient CD-ROM interface. That
> would be interesting as it's 8-bit and AFAIK, ATAPI devices are 16-bit
> only. There's not much on the card - a couple of buffers ('244, '245),
> an address comparator ('688), and a wee bit of logic ('32 x 2, '08,
> '00)... nothing to, say, latch two 8-bit writes into a 16-bit register.
>
> Anyone recognize this beast?  Is it useful in anything besides a
> DOS/Win3.1 box?

It should be supported under Linux or *BSD. I have one of these that I
used to use under Linux, so I know they used to be supported anyway. The
cdrom drive isn't ATAPI, but was a very common interface before ATA cdrom
drives became available. If memory serves, there were 3 non-ATAPI
interfaces that were fairly common. Some of the early Soundblaster cards
that supported an ATAPI drive also had the other 3 connectors on them.

-Toth