XTIDE controller now available

[Michael B. Brutman]

Jim Leonard wrote:
> I wanted to let all of you know that the 2nd revision of my friend's 
> PC/XT IDE controller is now available.  For those of you not in the 
> know, this is a way of using modern IDE hard drives in your 8bit PC or 
> XT system.  Works with drives up to 137G (your O/S also has to support 
> it; 8.4G is way more common) and Compact Flash->IDE controllers too. 
> CD-ROM support is likely coming eventually, but he has to write an 
> entire driver that MSCDEX would talk to.
> 
> They're being sold at cost: $30 for a kit to solder your own, $40 for a 
> pre-built and tested card.
> 
> These are not quite the end production unit, but darn close.  Works in
> PC/XT clones, as well as Tandy 1000 series machines (anyone who knows 
> how hard it is to get an IDE drive into a Tandy will appreciate this). 
> They are also going to be building one that will fit into a PCjr sidecar 
> someday.  ;)
> 
> Details are available on the last message of this forum page: 
> http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/showthread.php?t=12359&page=109

Just to clarify, this is a first run of the second revision cards.  They 
are limited in supply, and we are probably sending them to people who 
did testing with the first round.  So most of them will be spoken for.

For the privilege of having an early card, you've got to do some hard 
core testing.  We have found very few drives that refuse to work, but 
they are out there.  The BIOS is still being debugged, especially with 
the earlier/smaller LBA drives.

I think it's a little early to say they are being sold yet ..  I'd check 
back on that thread in about two months to see how testing has gone, and 
to wait for the next batch of pc boards to be made up.  Early samples of 
this kit work already so it's not a bad bet, but it's not production 
quality yet either.

(I'm intimately involved in this project - I did the trace optimization 
for this last batch of cards, and helped with the early design.)


Mike