Fred Cisin wrote: That's mostly true, in my experience, though also not to do with the width of the data bus :) but more to do with the type of disks, what you say would mostly be true for MFM or RLL disks, of which most 8 bit controlers are, but would also apply to 16bit MFM/RLL too. But it would not apply to for example SCSI, or IDE, though for 8 bit IDE you do need a compatible drive. In my experience I have also found that the rule isn't hard and fast for MFM drives, for example I can read the disks from my Altos unix box on a PC with a compatible WD MFM chipset, though the slight complication is that the Altos disks are 16 sectors/track rather than the more common 17 on a PC. Mind I really only have experience of WD chipsets, as they where most common here in the UK, cirtainly I have other MFM/RLL cards, but only thew odd one or two, whereas I have several WD based ones. Do I remember the original Xebec ones having a Z80 on board, so maybe they where partly software driven, and the incompatibility was due to different versions of the software. To the OP: you said that you have tried different drives, have you also tried different cables, I'm asuming so but you didn't say so may not of thought of it :) Cheers. Phill. -- Phill Harvey-Smith, Programmer, Hardware hacker, and general eccentric ! "You can twist perceptions, but reality won't budge" -- Rush.

I have an XT and a bootable 8bit SCSI card is probably more useful then an 8 bit IDE one (old SCSI drives are still around). Almost won a bootable Trantor 130B a few days back ( in Australia) is went for $17 Australian which is $.65 or something in US dollars (I bid and forgot about it). I should probably just live with dual floppies but I like HDs in anything that can use them.

Chuck Guzis wrote: Anyone have a SASI card for the PC available and whatever low level formatting program that is required.... I have an ATR8000 for my Atari. Inside it has a module that goes between the cpu and socket and provides a SASI interface. That then runs to a Xebec SASI<->MFM bridgeboard and then would control say an ST-225. Problem is I don't seem to have the CP/M low level formatter .... I have all the higher level stuff I think.... but this stopped me years ago with no low level formatter. The other thing I've wondered is if there is a way I could hook a small SCSI drive up to the SASI controller and have it work (save the whole bridgeboard and old MFM drive route). -- Curt

----- Original Message ----- From: "Richard" <legalize at xmission.com> To: "General Discussion: On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts" <cctalk at classiccmp.org> Sent: Thursday, March 19, 2009 12:01 AM Subject: Re: Looking for an 8 bit HD controller Hardcards are nice if they still work (the drives are dying). Since I collect old Macs I tend to have a small stack of smallish HDs that I removed to install something bigger. My XT is actually a NEC V20 system (Kaypro made MC-10 system I think it is), and it has 2 internal 5.25" HH bays for HDs along with the 2 exposed 5.25" 360K HH drives. Currently I have an old 80MB 5.25" SCSI HD waiting for a bootable SCSI controller (I have a TMC 850 with no ROM).

Jim Leonard wrote: That should be easy enough to fix... Read the ROMs off a good one and burn a new set for the broken ones, no? Peace... Sridhar

I'll bet you could find one on eBay. :-) Sorry, I couldn't resist -- Ian

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 1:13 PM, Alexey Toptygin <alexeyt at freeshell.org> wrote: I saw a plus hardcard 20 on ebay a couple weeks ago. It was 1 slot wide. (I used to drool over those things in advertisements in either byte or pc world. Can't remember which. Those were the days.) brian

Yes, it does. I had one (a BEAUTIFUL piece of hardware)

I just like it, a long black slab :) I had one made with a half-height 3 1/2 HD. but the hardcard is beautiful, I do love that.