Did anyone ever see fit to make a cassette interface compatible with
that of the 5150 that was on a card?
Not that I know of, but it should be possible. As you may know, there
were BIOS routines to access the cassette port (I forget the number, INT
15h ?). They simply return without doing anything on the XT (and AT). A
BIOS extension ROM could intercept that interrupt vector and drive a
cassette port.
-tony