Description
Transform your IBM PC, PC/XT or compatible PC by replacing the MFM or RLL hard drive with an ATA-2 CompactFlash card! This card provides bootable fixed disk storage and can reach 300KB/s in a 4.77MHz 8088 based IBM PC/XT when used with multi-sector capable CompactFlash cards or Microdrives. This card is a bootable storage adapter for IBM PC, PC/XT, PC/AT and compatible hardware – essentially any PC with an ISA slot. (Please note, your PC must support option ROM chips to work with the onboard ROM.)
Compact Flash cards are also not without their perils. Many cards we have found which claim ATA-2 compatibility are not fully compatible. This tends to be the case with lower end cards. We like SanDisk Ultra / Ultra 2. We generally use 2gb or 4gb cards, but larger or smaller can be used. Any ATA-2 compliant card should work, but be aware that some experimentation may be necessary. DOS 5.0 or 6.22 are probably best, as you can support a full 2GB FAT16 partition. Only use your target PC to format the card. Windows may, or may not configure the partitions correctly. Of course, you may run other operating systems as well, but create the partition via the OS setup. If for some reason your machine does not boot after FDISK and Format, run “FDISK/mbr” to reset the boot sector. This often fixes a hang at boot-time.
This sale is for the PCB only. You will need to get the rest of the parts and a CompactFlash card. This board will need to be assembled, so please see the wiki for the parts list and instructions. Please note the part number for the 3M CompactFlash socket is 3M N7E50-Q516RB-50.
Lo-tech reference pages: blog entry, FAQ and wiki page.
The ROM on this card is provided by the XT-IDE Universal BIOS via GNU GPL v2.
You may also want to check out the SanDisk Ultra II CompactFlash Card.
