I think these are ATAPI interfaces for CD-ROMs. Never seen one used for HDDs.

Things to check:
- Do your sound card work in an 8 bit slot?
- Do the PATA port work in an 8 bit slot (I guess you can query the hard disk using debug.com)?

If everything works, it's time to get a network card with EPROM socket, and try to put XT-IDE BIOS on it. Keep in mind that maybe you'll need to customize it to work.

(I guess that XT-IDE can boot any PATA channel. Most BIOS only boots from first or second channel.)

I guess that, unless you already got some spare sound cards, it will be cheaper to get a real XT-IDE card (or an XT-CF one).

There's no way a HDD will work when connected to a sound card's CDROM connector.
I don't know about other tricks mentioned like putting the XT-IDE BIOS somewhere (nice idea btw), but just by connecting it to a sound card without doing anything else, I'm 100% certain it won't.

There has been talk about a wery few soundcards being able to be used as an HDD controller. Only one user here have said that it was working. He, however, did not remember what card.

Then there has been talk, about using the XT-IDE BIOS. Burning it to a Rom, mounting it on a Network card for driving a HDD connected to a soundcard.

This is all from the back of my mind, as I have never done it.

One potential downfall that I see to using the XTIDE BIOS to boot a HDD attached to a sound card is:

-XTIDE can potentially boot the HDD if given the correct parameters for the IDE port on the sound card
-however if the sound card requires drivers to be loaded to configure its resources, as many ISA sound cards do, the IDE channel may be in an undefined state until drivers are loaded
-but you can't load the drivers until the HDD boots

As a result, you can't use the HDD until you load the sound drivers. But you can't load the drivers until you boot the HDD. Catch-22 situation.
For example my Aztech Sound Galaxy would fall under this scenario.

But if the sound card has jumpers to configure the IDE port, or if it's truly PnP and is configured completely by BIOS before the OS is loaded, it may work.

stamasd wrote:

One potential downfall that I see to using the XTIDE BIOS to boot a HDD attached to a sound card is: […]
Show full quote

One potential downfall that I see to using the XTIDE BIOS to boot a HDD attached to a sound card is:

-XTIDE can potentially boot the HDD if given the correct parameters for the IDE port on the sound card
-however if the sound card requires drivers to be loaded to configure its resources, as many ISA sound cards do, the IDE channel may be in an undefined state until drivers are loaded
-but you can't load the drivers until the HDD boots

As a result, you can't use the HDD until you load the sound drivers. But you can't load the drivers until you boot the HDD. Catch-22 situation.
For example my Aztech Sound Galaxy would fall under this scenario.

But if the sound card has jumpers to configure the IDE port, or if it's truly PnP and is configured completely by BIOS before the OS is loaded, it may work.

http://sbfmdrv.blogspot.dk/2015/11/retrofitti … old-pc.html?m=1

brostenen wrote:

http://sbfmdrv.blogspot.dk/2015/11/retrofitti … old-pc.html?m=1

Yes, this discusses how to install the XTIDE bios but doesn't change the fact that you may or may not be able to boot a HDD from a sound card.

Zup wrote:

- Do the PATA port work in an 8 bit slot (I guess you can query the hard disk using debug.com)?

This. AFAIK the reason the XTIDE exists is that standard 16 bit ISA IDE controllers won't work in an XT. If there are 8-bit sound cars with IDE those might work.

Some 16bit soundcards can run in a 8bit Slot.
It all depends if you get lucky.

Then I have seen manuals for some 16 bit controllers were it said that you can Jumper them for XT mode.

So from what I'm getting here it's probably less effort to just get an XT-IDE.
Bah not like I'm keeping this system. Thanks though, might mess with this anyway while I have it.

If you have no need for flash media, there's also SCSI left as an alternative.
Maybe you're lucky and you find an 8bit controller.

OTOH many IDE controllers from 16-bit multi-IO cards work in 8-bit mode with the XTIDE BIOS. You may have better luck with one of those (unless you're really looking at saving ISA slots)

Everyone's goal seems to be to use the IDE drive as a bootable drive, but could it perhaps be used as a simple storage media over the sound card, instead? Even if it was a DOS system, that had to boot DOS over MFM drivers or some such thing, couldn't you then proceed to load Windows, and every other program you want to store and load, faster since the soundcard drivers will have loaded by then?

By definition, the controllers for the drivers are on the drive itself, and the interface is simply a bridge between the system and the drive. However, it is 16-bit by design, and I don't know if I've ever seen an 8-bit soundcard with an IDE connector.

A possible plus is that ATAPI interfaces are more advanced than regular IDE interfaces so may be even more possible to run an IDE HDD over a soundcard than we think. I'm really getting antsy to try this, now. But then, I was working on computers before XT's were completely gone, and 386's and 486's were still very abundant, and I don't ever recall someone doing this.

Sure it works. I tried this with a simple CD Inteface card (IDE), a CF card and a Cyrix MediaGX machine.
The on-board IDE was disabled and the 586 BIOS used the ISA card instead.
It wasn't a pretty solution, but it worked at least ok for PIO mode 0 (maybe also 1-4).
No idea if it works properly with DMA modes, though. Maybe Single-/Multi-Word-DMA, but UDMA won't work.

Edit: I was talking about AT style systems, of course. PC/XT systems are a bit more difficult, I guess.
Some if not most 8bit soundcards (SB2 clones, SB Pro, etc.) use the 16bit part of the ISA slot for the IDE interface (please tell me if I'm wrong on this).
Edit2: Some GoldenSound cards seem to use 8bit ISA for CD, too.

Actually that's a good ide from Logistics up there. Booting via floppy is fine and not that much slower than HDD (it's an 8088 lo), the only real reason I want a hard disk is because 360k ISN'T MUCH SPACE.

Tell me then, how does this work? Plug disk into soundcard, boot from floppy- but is it somehow automatic? I assume I need drivers but this is new to me. I'm 90s, not 80s.

(All I want to do with this system ATM is use Word 5 or something and write a paper, I get a kick out of writing on absurd platforms. Someone GIVE me a powerbook g3)

SRQ wrote:

(All I want to do with this system ATM is use Word 5 or something and write a paper, I get a kick out of writing on absurd platforms. Someone GIVE me a powerbook g3)

If you're up to that level of masochism, try writing your paper on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum using Tasword. 😀

It's not that bad. I find Word 5 on an amber screen relaxing.
I also used it with a green one once. Looked like the StarCraft exposition scrolls was quite neat.

SRQ wrote:

Actually that's a good ide from Logistics up there. Booting via floppy is fine and not that much slower than HDD (it's an 8088 lo), the only real reason I want a hard disk is because 360k ISN'T MUCH SPACE.

Uhm, I heard ZIP drives for parallel port can be used with PC/XT machines.
Drivers should also be available for DOS, but maybe you need a NEC V20 processor for them.

Use a LapLink cable and INTERSVR/LNK to map a HDD on a host. That is the most hassle free way to access a lot of storage on a 8086/8. And most games that run on a 8086/8 are so slow a parallel link works fine.