I'm of a "whatever works" mentality. I've been running a 16-bit I/O card in a XT class machine (8-bit only) with the help of some BIOS extensions. 😀 On a 386 you shouldn't have any trouble using any 16-bit I/O card provided that the card is correctly jumpered and isn't broken. I have one of those M396 boards, I don't recall what exact I/O board I have in it but the first one that I picked at random from a pile worked flawlessly.

I believe, you can choose any one that works and preferably having an at least online documentation about jumper settings (hint: TH99). Multi I/O cards (HDD, floppy, serial/parallel port on the same card) are preferable in my opinion, but having two seperate cards for the purpose is also ok.

If you want to go fully era correct and especially like dealing with lots of trouble, you can also choose the ST-506/ST-412/ESDI road 🤣

Yeah, what tayyare said. Find the documentation online before you buy one, that's the most important thing. Well, get one that works *and* you have documentation.

Technically later models are probably always better for compatibility reasons, though not authenticity.

I use Acculogic s/IDE boards because that's what I already have.

tayyare wrote:

If you want to go fully era correct and especially like dealing with lots of trouble, you can also choose the ST-506/ST-412/ESDI road 🤣

MFM for a 386? 😳 Not era correct, but I concur with the "lol" part!

konc wrote:

MFM for a 386? 😳 Not era correct, but I concur with the "lol" part!

Not sure this is entirely correct. My first PC in 1991 had a 20MB MFM HD. It was a 286, but 386 were pretty common at this time already and 486 were starting to be available although at insane prices.

386's with MFM hard drives were extremely common back in the hey day, although IDE drives were starting their takeover at this point.

Given availability, price and general ease of use, if you think a bog standard multi I/O card is challenging, don't even consider MFM/RLL, let alone deceased ESDI unicorns 😉

One period-correct option if you don't want to deal with any 'weird' stuff: SCSI. It would have been very expensive then, only used in workstations, but the basics of SCSI in a 386 are exactly the same as with any other SCSI in any other system, in fact easier: all internal drives and controllers were 50p SE, so no worrying about LVD/HVD or 68p/80p connectors. Also, because SCSI is exquisitely backwards compatible you can use pretty much any SCSI drive with any SCSI controller that will fit in the 386, even if the first one you find is (much) newer than the 386 you want to use.

dionb wrote:

One period-correct option if you don't want to deal with any 'weird' stuff: SCSI.

This is actually not a terrible suggestion; I do have a couple of SCSI hard disks. The only thing is that, to me, putting SCSI into a 386 would definitely turn it into "workstation" territory... and where the 386 motherboard I have has a 386SX processor, rather than 386DX, is decidedly not "workstation". However, the 386SX is perfectly suitable for my needs (that is, playing DOS games in the 1985-1990 era). Additionally, I would still need a floppy controller, and most controllers I've seen that have a floppy interface also have an IDE interface, so... I figure might as well use IDE drive (which I also have many). That's just me though; I would totally understand putting a SCSI drive into a 386 though.

konc wrote:

tayyare wrote:

If you want to go fully era correct and especially like dealing with lots of trouble, you can also choose the ST-506/ST-412/ESDI road 🤣

MFM for a 386? 😳 Not era correct, but I concur with the "lol" part!

🤣

By the way, early 386 (87-88) era is also MFM/RLL era, Our Unysis 386 PCs and server that we had in the department during university years all had MFM 40MB HDDs.

Just to kind of close off this thread, I have decided to go with an all-in-one (IDE, Floppy, Parallel, Serial) card, just waiting for the right deal to pop up on eBay. Per the others' comments, I am not too worried about year for my 1989ish build. In fact a lot of good Goldstar multi i/o cards seem to be circa 1994...

Anyway, I also found out that should one want to go the SCSI route, Adaptec's AHA-1542 is a SCSI and floppy controller, which would obviously nicely complement a serial/parallel card for complete setup (no IDE of course, kind of negating my previous comments about not finding a floppy controller without an attached IDE controller).

Back in the day when external modems were common, getting a ISA Multi-I/O card with an 16550 serial port (aka FIFO UART) was important. Were there ISA Multi-I/O cards that had 16550 support without having a clearly labeled 16550 chip on them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550_UART Is there any down side to getting a card with 16550 support?

Is there any easy way to identify ISA Multi-I/O cards that had LPT ports with EPP or ECP support?

I've heard that some ISA cards supported double speed floppies and 2.88 MB floppies, but I don't know how to identify those either.

Still looking for an ISA card that does something different than directly patch an IDE drive directly into the ISA bus, but I've not found one yet.

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 12:22:

Still looking for an ISA card that does something different than directly patch an IDE drive directly into the ISA bus, but I've not found one yet.

There was a bunch of caching controllers...

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 12:22:

Back in the day when external modems were common, getting a ISA Multi-I/O card with an 16550 serial port (aka FIFO UART) was imp […]
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Back in the day when external modems were common, getting a ISA Multi-I/O card with an 16550 serial port (aka FIFO UART) was important. Were there ISA Multi-I/O cards that had 16550 support without having a clearly labeled 16550 chip on them? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/16550_UART Is there any down side to getting a card with 16550 support?

Is there any easy way to identify ISA Multi-I/O cards that had LPT ports with EPP or ECP support?

I've heard that some ISA cards supported double speed floppies and 2.88 MB floppies, but I don't know how to identify those either.

Still looking for an ISA card that does something different than directly patch an IDE drive directly into the ISA bus, but I've not found one yet.

One IDE channel, one floppy channel (DD & HD), dual 16450 & SPP
That was standard.

16550 was strongly recommended when you have used modem connection in multitasking systems like Windows.
2.88 (ED) floppies were seldom seen, sometimes in IBM computers with onboard Multi-IO.
There is no easy way to identify EPP capability. ECP may have jumpers for DMA channel.

Well, there is a caching controller for ISA, like Tekram DC-600 series.

To the original topic: Most of 386 BIOS will have a limit of 504 MB disks (1023 Cylinders, 16 heads, 63 sectors). You perhaps may enter bigger values but it likely will make problems with operating systems like DOS.
In this case you can either use a DDO (like Ontrack Disk Manager) to pass the limit, or install a custom ROM with "XT-IDE" on a network card.

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 12:22:

Back in the day when external modems were common, getting a ISA Multi-I/O card with an 16550 serial port (aka FIFO UART) was important. Were there ISA Multi-I/O cards that had 16550 support without having a clearly labeled 16550 chip on them?

Yes. Some of the latest highly integrated multi-I/O chips hat integrated 16550s. The most common multi-I/O chips on ISA cards integrate 16450s, though. The time multi-I/O chips with 16550 support got common was the time I/O was moved from dedicated cards to the mainboard.

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 12:22:

Is there any down side to getting a card with 16550 support?

I don't know of any technical downside.

douglar wrote on 2024-06-13, 12:22:

Is there any easy way to identify ISA Multi-I/O cards that had LPT ports with EPP or ECP support?

I don't think I ever saw EPP or ECP implemented in discrete logic, so checking the data sheet for the I/O chip is the way to go. Don't bother checking for ECP, EPP or integrated 16550 on cards with manufacture dates before 1993.