I think majority of XT users use MFM HDDs, myself included.
As for file transfer, I usually use LAN, but I also keep some later machine with a 360KB FDD - after all, the networking software has to be somehow installed on the XT's HDD first...

All you need is a parallel or serial cable to establish basic connectivity between an early DOS computer and a later one. So long as the newer machine has INTERLNK/INTERSVR (i.e. DOS 5 or 6) you're good to go.

My Vtech Laser XT Turbo has the famous ST225, though I have never gotten it to read. The motherboard has been in the repair pile for a while, been hacking away at it over the years. Doesn't need too much more.

Gave up on MFM drives. Fitted a XT-IDE card. A lot more choices and a BigFoot hdd fits nicely in the drive bay.

My turbo XT with NEC v20@10MHz has a 20MB WDC262

For file transfer I simply use floppy disks and ethernet with mTCP.

my IBM 5150 is equipped with two working ST-225s in the left full height bay, and dual floppies in the right bay

I use a WD8003 NIC and mTCP for file transfer, it's honestly easier than moving a CF card around and the FTP programs have no problem saturating the disk I/O

My IBM 5160 XT build has a Seagate ST-225 MFM drive.

For file transfers I use mTCP's FTP server.

But I also have XTIDE installed on an EEPROM chip on my Ethernet card, which allows you to mount & boot virtual floppy & hard disk images over the Serial port. So this can be used as another method for file transfer, though I mostly just use it for running PC Booters.

mTCP is the gold standard, if you have a slot for a NIC anything less is really just inferior

I no longer use MFM. Now it's a combination of SCSI and SCSIDE + CF card.
My old MFM setup was pretty cool though. At one point I had dual ST-251s, which normally format to about 40mb each. However, I stuck them on a WD1002A-27X RLL controller, and I think each of them became 52mb. I can't say I really recommend dual MFM drives though, because it's pretty noisy.

I currently only own one MFM drive. It's a 10MB IBM drive that was the original drive with the XT. I haven't powered it on in 20 years and I'm not even sure if it still works!

Anonymous Coward wrote:

I no longer use MFM. Now it's a combination of SCSI and SCSIDE + CF card.
My old MFM setup was pretty cool though. At one point I had dual ST-251s, which normally format to about 40mb each. However, I stuck them on a WD1002A-27X RLL controller, and I think each of them became 52mb. I can't say I really recommend dual MFM drives though, because it's pretty noisy.

I currently only own one MFM drive. It's a 10MB IBM drive that was the original drive with the XT. I haven't powered it on in 20 years and I'm not even sure if it still works!

one man's noisy is another man's beautiful symphony

I think old HDDs sound wonderful, the more the bettter

I think I had that same Kalok MFM 20 MB drive in my Commodore PC10-III. The controller also looks similar.
I no longer have that machine though.
I do have an MFM machine still. That is my IBM 5160 from 1987. It still has its original 20 MB Seagate MFM drive in there. The controller card looks much larger and oldfashioned than that one.

File transfers are done with a serial nulmodem cable using FastLynx, to my modern PC with a USB serial cable.

I've got a HP Vectra CS computer with a V30 processor.

It has a 20meg MFM hard drive, Seagate ST-251, in pretty decent nick. The MFM card does not come with a BIOS, but the HP has built in support for this card.

I use the MFM card for booting and DOS isntallation, but I have a 4gb CF card and XT-IDE card for bulk storage.

Other cards in this computer:
a) NE2000 compatible card for ethernet in 8bit mode.
b) Sound Blaster 2.0 clone card (Sound magic)
c) Some strange Instrumentation card with HP-IB port and onboard 68000 processor.

maxtherabbit wrote:

mTCP is the gold standard, if you have a slot for a NIC anything less is really just inferior

Let's not get carried away 😉

mbbrutman wrote:

maxtherabbit wrote:

mTCP is the gold standard, if you have a slot for a NIC anything less is really just inferior

Let's not get carried away 😉

Yes, it's not like people have bootdisks with the ftpserver and use it with every old system they get 🤣

Nice to see these old MFM drives still being in use 30+ years later! 😎

Thanks for the suggestions about the file transfer methods. I actually didn't know about Interlink or Fastlynx.

In the mean time I did get two different 8-bit ethernet cards - a 3com Etherlink II and a WD8003. Both work with mTCP and it makes transferring files to the MFM drive a breeze. mTCP truly is amazing... thanks Mr. mbbrutman 🤣

Now I just need to find a working 5.25" FDD. For some reason there are games that don't seem to work when launched from the hard drive, but work from a floppy disk.

I have a VTECH LASER TURBO xt will a XT-IDE Rev 4.1, ISA 8-Bit IDE Controller work in it? or a compact flash one? Right now it just has the 2 5.25 inch floppy drives and they can be a pain if they wear out mainly the boot floppy 🤣

Would be nice to load all the games i have for it on a storage device Sense when i got this pc free in like 2000 it came tons of 5.25s with games on them and with the keyboard joystick and also the Magnavox monitor. everything still works to this day:)

Nice that you have a good working XT computer ! Yes you should be able to use XT-IDE r4 on your Laser XT, it would go in same slot as the current HD controller. The CF versions should also work fine. Only problem is what OS you run as Dos 3 supports up to 504MB HD in the OS, DOS 5 and up supports 2Gb so you will want a small HD (for r4) based on my experience. Am sure there are others that give better info.

Any Dos lower than PC/MSDos 3.3 can only have partition sizes up to 32 megs in size, Something to consider when choosing your Dos version. I'm using DrDos 6 on my XT-Turbo clone with 8=bit XT-IDE card and 2 gig hdd.

^Except for some ancient OEM versions of DOS which used non-standard sector sizes and partition types. 😉