Junkbox CP/M system?

Hi, It's been probably 12 years since I looked at the IDE spec (or the pinout of an IDE port for that matter) but I was sure I remembered seeing a signal on the connector which, when asserted, forced the drive to work in "8-bit" mode? No? Wonder what I'm confusing it with then...? WD did a (shortlived ISTR) line of 8-bit IDE drives, I had one - along with the associated ISA bus card. I forget the model number, but they were differentiated from the otherwise identical "16-bit" versions by having an "XT" suffix on the model number. And they were bl**dy unreliable too! :-( These came out shortly after WD acquired(?) Tandon; they were basically 3.5" Tandon RLL drives with a WD IDE controller in place of the Tandon electronics, IYSWIM? mode was never very widespread and/or b) this mode was dropped from the specification somewhere along the line (E-IDE perhaps)? I must admit I've not kept up with developments in IDE, I switched to SCSI in 1991 and never bought another IDE drive until last year.... I didn't look into it deeply enough to find out what drive they recommend, I was just browsing through some postings in one of the Atari newsgroups and saw mention of it. do exactly what you suggest and "waste" half of the available space. I got the impression that one of these interfaces could run the drive in 8-bit mode, though from what you say it probably has to be a very specific (old) drive....or maybe the guy was referring to using a CF card, quite a few people seem to be using them in this manner? I'll go do some more digging, I'm intrigued now.... :-) TTFN - Pete.