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16-bit ISA card in 8-bit slot?

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First post, by debs3759

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Will a 16-bit ISA i/o controller with IDE/Floppy/Serial work in an 8-bit slot on an XT motherboard, or do I need to buy an XT-IDE card and separate 8-bit i/o card for RS232? If I need to buy an XT-IDE, does anyone have a link to a site that sells them? I have only found kits for the latest revision.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 1 of 4, by dionb

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Some 16b cards work in 8b slots, but it varies per card.

Bigger issue: AT and later IDE controllers don't need their own BIOS because the system BIOS can handle the drives. XT systems can't so an XT IDE controller needs a BIOS. Some 16b ISA I/O controllers have a BIOS socket for this purpose - like a DTK ST-506 controller I was playing around with this evening, and a simple Goldstar IDE controller I very unwisely sold recently.

So it's possible, but by no means a given.

If you have a controller with a socket for an EPROM but no ROM and nowhere to source the original ROM from, you could use an XTIDE ROM image for it.

Reply 2 of 4, by debs3759

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Great, thanks

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 3 of 4, by stamasd

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I'll plug again my thread on vcfed where I dealt with this exact problem, and how I managed to get a 16-bit IO card with floppy and HDD controllers working on a XT-class computer. Initially with the help of a XTIDE card and a ROM card but eventually I moved all the code in the main ROM area.
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?484 … ebay-components

I/O, I/O,
It's off to disk I go,
With a bit and a byte
And a read and a write,
I/O, I/O

Reply 4 of 4, by dionb

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stamasd wrote:

I'll plug again my thread on vcfed where I dealt with this exact problem, and how I managed to get a 16-bit IO card with floppy and HDD controllers working on a XT-class computer. Initially with the help of a XTIDE card and a ROM card but eventually I moved all the code in the main ROM area.
http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?484 … ebay-components

Wow. Just wow. Bookmarked 😀

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