VOGONS


First post, by daibido1123

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Hi all, I have a quick question.

I am looking into the possibility of rebuilding old ISA and NU-BUS Hard cards, by replacing the HDD with an SSD or Compact Flash adapter. I know that the HDDs on these devices had some funky partition tables and formating on them. So I am looking into the feasibility of doing this.

So my question is, is it possible to do this kind of rebuilding, and if so, does anyone know how or can point me in the right direction?

Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous
Confucius

Reply 1 of 4, by BitWrangler

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That sounds as bad as restoring old machines by gutting them and installing a raspberry pi. If you want flash use one of these https://monotech.fwscart.com/XTIDE_Deluxe_Boo … 4_19478732.aspx
If you wanna restore stuff, actually restore it.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 2 of 4, by TrashPanda

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The logistics of taking a old proprietary HDD format and trying to rig it on to a modern SDD or CF makes me want to run and hide, the old formatting was unique to each HDD as every bad sector had to be mapped out at the factory before the drive could be formatted and each drive was unique and had its own bad sector tables and formatting that took that into account. Some of the formatting was very strange too and used custom sectors and boot sectors in ways modern drives simply cant replicate, back then none of this was unusual and the HDDs were built to be able to be programmed at the controller level to deal with this.

I doubt you could even get a modern drive to accept the custom partitions and formatting in any acceptable way without killing the modern drive, you would also need an old working HDD with the partition and formatting you want to use at which point . .why not just use the old HDD.

Now if you want to say .. emulate it then things do become a lot easier but that doesnt sound like what you are wanting to do.

Reply 3 of 4, by cyclone3d

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I have one if the 120MB ISA Hard Cards. All it is is just a proprietary controller with a hard drive mounted directly to it.

Other than a computer needing more storage when all the bays were already taken I really don't see the point of them.

That being said, not sure why it would be super difficult to modify them to accept some solid state storage IF the controllers are IDE compatible.

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Reply 4 of 4, by BitWrangler

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I've seen various forms, some where you could identify standard MFM/RLL or IDE drives just bolted onto an interface card, some where the on drive controller was more integrated with the board, and some that looked completely custom (From HDD manufacturers obviously) In their last gasp of the early 90s they tended toward standard IDE.

They were popular in the late 80s because there were many machines like Tandys and Amstrads that were supplied all floppied out, 2 drive or tight single drive configs, as were IBM PCs and XTs with full height drives. So from the factory there was no obvious space for a hard drive in some instances. Also in that era there were a lot more proprietary configurations around still, which had either limited space or for AT class a limited BIOS. These machines although probably half of the market in the late 80s are rare now because lacking easy or more standard upgrade options, they were among the first to the landfill... or later recycling. Some of these might have had only 6, 10 or 20 BIOS HDD types, and when new you could maybe order the right hard drive for them, just 2 or 3 years down the road however, they might have become unobtanium. So an all in one solution was attractive even if they did have drive bays and a controller available.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.