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8-bit-ide

WIP on a solid state replacement for 8 bit IDE hard drives.

This project is looking at implementing replacements for:

  1. The somewhat standard drive type used by PCs with 8 bit ISA bus. This uses a the same style of 40 pin header as ATA however the pinout and protocols are different. This is referred to by various names such as XT-BUS, XT-IDE, IDE-XT or XTA. We will refer to this as XTA.

    XTA should not be confused with the much more modern XTIDE Universal BIOS and cards which were created to adapt ATA devices to XT PCs. It should also not be confused with the ATA 8 bit transfer mode available in many compact flash cards.

  2. The IBM proprietary 8 bit IDE hard drive type with card edge connector. These were used in the IBM PS/2 Model 25 and Model 30 as well as early 8086 and 80286 IBM PS/1's. We will refer to this IBM 8-bit DBA (Direct BUS Attachment).

    IBM 8-bit DBA should not be confused with IBM's MCA (Microchannel) DBA hard drive type. This type uses a card edge connector and integrates the drive controller into the drive. To the system BIOS, these devices look like the IBM MCA ESDI hard drive controller card and so are sometimes confusingly referred to as ESDI hard drives. This project does not plan to implement a replacement for the IBM MCA DBA "ESDI" drives.

More information available in this VCFED discussion: https://www.vcfed.org/forum/forum/genres/pcs-and-clones/1224016-8-bit-ide-xta-replacement-project