So I picked up this old 386sx along with a BBC B micro from a seller to add to my collection. Powered it up and the Connor CP30084E decided to smoke 🙁 On further inspection found it was the ST61153-002 that had gone up in smoke

Bought another older model faulty drive cheap to see if I could get it going, so pulled the IC off the drive and installed it

Anyway, was a no go but that might be down to that IC also being faulty! Ill save that drive for another day to play about with! Anyway somebody mentioned getting a NIC card and flashing XT-IDE onto it, then I came across the $4 XT-IDE card project, so ordered a few boards from PCBway and parts from Aliexpress. Week later all parts arrived and knocked the board together and flashed the ROM.

Stuck it into an ISA slot

Chucked a WD 40GB drive in, might stick a CF Card in there later maybe! But happy now as finally got this up and running 😀

Anybody need a board, I have another 4 spare already built. Info might help anybody that has the same problem installing a replacement drive, or want to go down the CF route! This will also work with machines back to the XT years!