Interesting! Thanks for sharing! 😎
I think that's possible because IDE is based on ISA.
Or if being old-school, AT-Bus. Early IDE HDDs were known as AT-Bus drives for a reason.
IDE or ATA (AT Attached) is a sub-set of ISA, so to say.
It includes most fundamental i/o signals, but has a fixed port address,
determined by the host adapter (ISA) - or IDE controller (PCI).
If memory serves, there used to be EPROM programmers that interfaced with ISA through IDE.
Similar like prommers did in the C64 days (they attached directly to user port).
By the way, streamers were similarly odd sometimes.
The cheap 3,5" ones interfaced via high-speed floppy controller cards.
Technically, the controllers were usable for the usual floppy drives, too, if there was some compensation for the oddball i/o address.
A hacked driver.sys or driveparm utility, I suppose.
Edit: There also was similar stuff in the old Pocket PC days..
I remember, there used to be WLAN (aka Wi-Fi) adapters for the CF or SD slot.
By using these, older Win CE devices could be integraded in the then new WEP64/128-based wireless LANs. 😉
Looked a bit like the Gameboy Camera installed in a Gameboy Color.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
//My video channel//