XTIDE controller now available

[Steven Hirsch]

On Mon, 5 Oct 2009, Chuck Guzis wrote:

> On 4 Oct 2009 at 20:47, Steven Hirsch wrote:
>
>> What am I not understanding about the need for this product?  I have
>> about a half-dozen 8-bit ISA IDE controllers, mostly Seagate branded.
>> Didn't think they were particularly rare.
>
> The overwhelming majority of those old 8-bit IDE controllers worked
> with XTIDE drives, which supported 8-bit data transfers.
> Unfortunately, even though the ATA standard kept the 8-bit transfer
> as an option for quite some time, no vendor supported it.  Any IDE
> drive over about 100MB is likely to support only 16-bit transfers.
>
> As I understand the subject controller project, it latches the upper
> 8 bits of a 16-bit data transfer and makes it available in a
> subsequent cycle.

Ah.  Ok, thanks all.  I didn't really consider the 8/16 bit issue, but 
should know better.  This is a big problem when trying to find a 
replacement drive for Apple II drive systems such as the Applied 
Engineering Vulcan.  There are only a small handful of IDE drives that 
will work with them.

> However, one can use a CF memory card in an 8-bit IDE application, as
> I understand that all CF cards support the 8-bit mode of ATA.

That's an interesting fact I'll keep filed away!

Steve


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