Description
**PLEASE BE AWARE that as of May 2024 we have started having the 3D printed brackets printed professionally. Therefore, the bracket you receive could be white.
*PLEASE NOTE: Due to a shortage of ROM chips you may receive our SMT PCB Replacement ROM instead of the DIP ROM chip installed on the card pictured. The SMT PCB Replacement ROM is pictured in the last photo.
The ISA IDE to SD adapter is the latest iteration of XTIDE-based hard drive solutions for vintage computers. It is functionally equivalent to the popular Lo-Tech ISA CompactFlash Adapter and has an integrated IDE to SD adapter installed on-board. We have also created a custom 3D Resin-Printed bracket which allows the card to be mounted in any PC with a standard 8- or 16-bit ISA slot.
This updated card maintains IBM XT 5160 Slot 8 compatibility and allows you to enable and disable the on-board ROM chip, which comes with the XTIDE BIOS preinstalled. It also allows the selection of one of four ROM addresses: 0xC000, 0xC800, 0xD000 or 0xD800. There is one additional jumper setting on the board labeled IOR delay. This delay was introduced on some later XTIDE based controllers to help with read errors on some CF cards. Initially, this delay did not seem necessary but on later revisions it was clear that the card behaves better with the delay enabled. Despite the being labeled to the contrary, the cards will ship with the delay enabled. This setting should only be changed as a last resort. In other words, if you have an issue, try another SD card before changing this setting.
We have tested with various major name SD cards as well as a few generic cards and generally have had good luck with most. Currently, we do not have any specific brands to stay away from. This adapter is new, so the listing will be updated if any compatibility issues are noted. The SD card used does not need to be particularly high-speed or high capacity, but we recommend using a disk utility on a modern PC to run a thorough integrity test of the device. The device should also be blank when installed on your DOS PC and partitioned and formatted from there. This is the best way to get the partition created properly for DOS to see it. Also, be sure to run FDISK/mbr after your format to reset the master boot record. This prevents a bad copy of the master boot record and is just good practice when working with CF or SD media on a DOS machine.
This card has been extensively tested on the IBM 5160 as well a Tandy 1000. These machines tend to be very picky about CF cards, but this adapter works great on both making the task of locating increasingly difficult to find CF cards a concern of the past. While 8-bit XTIDE based cards are primarily meant for lower-speed machines such as the 386 or earlier, they will work on most PCs with an ISA slot.
