To use an IDE drive (be that a CF card or a spinning 3.5" HDD), you are going to need an IDE BIOS; and it appears that your system doesn't have support since you say it only works with MFM drives - your options are:

- An XT-IDE card, with CF slot and on-board BIOS.... this is an all-in one, plug and go solution. The XTIDE BIOS adds IDE support to your mainboard BIOS and will scan and use any CF card you have plugged into the XT-IDE card. You can get various models of this - multiple CF slots, 3.5" IDE headers, no CF/3.5" headers etc.

- An XT-IDE BIOS, burned to an eprom, plugged into a network card - this gives you the IDE BIOS addon to your mainboard. But you then still need an IDE controller card to give you the 3.5" IDE connectors, floppy, serial etc; though these are quite common.

- A third party, period IDE controller with on-board BIOS. Like a Promise or similar. Though these are pretty difficult (and expensive) to track down.

Since you already have working floppy, serial etc. I'd suggest the first option is the easiest.

hi thanks for your reply.
will the lo tech cf card isa card work with this computer?
would you be able to link a few cf card adapters.
its just strange that this pc cant use ide as it does have 16 bit isa slots
the bios in this pc is very limited and only supports the mfm hds

Tex-Elec seem to be the official distributor of the lo-tech stuff.

If you want to use normal 3.5" IDE hard drives as well as CF cards (via an adapter) in the future, then you'd want something like this: https://texelec.com/product/isa-compactflash-adapter/

If, however, you are only bothered about CF cards, then an all-in-one with the CF socket built in like this: https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-xt-cf-lite-rev-2/

Note, I have no affiliation with this company, nor have I ever bought any of their products - though I do use the XT-IDE BIOS itself on a network card to perform the same function on a 286 of mine (to use modern-ish CF cards).

vkcpolice wrote on 2021-06-01, 11:16:

its just strange that this pc cant use ide as it does have 16 bit isa slots
the bios in this pc is very limited and only supports the mfm hds

Well, the 286 was released in 1982, and the IDE hard drive specification first released in 1986, so if your system dates before then (or even around then - just think how long some technologies take to become mainstream), it's fairly likely that the system would have been released without IDE support in its BIOS.

The 286 sold for a long time though - all the way through to the early 90's, so a lot of later boards (like several of mine) came with IDE support built in ... with pretty severe capacity limits, of course!

hi this computer is 1989
would this work? https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/303922444159?hash … pkAAOSwZylgUEV9
how would i know if a ide controller card would have a built in bios?

No. Normal multi-IO controllers will not work. They do not have a IDE BIOS and rely on the support from your motherboard main BIOS. This holds true for almost every single ISA and VLB multi-IO controller.

If you want to go the dedicated IDE controller route, and I will say that I would not recommend it (they all date from the early-mid 90's and were never developed in CF cards in mind), then you need something like this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/114325292386?hash=it … BoAAOSwnRpfk72V

Note the onboard BIOS rom..... and the crazy price!

Hi thanks could you link a modern cf card solution? thanks

also the card you linked has no floppy or mouse controller?

I thought you already had serial interfaces?

Hi yes i have a mfm controller card i just was not sure they could both be used at the same time.
i might skip this one and try for a fc card with a bios but im not sure what to buy.

I thought I'd already recommended that the easiest and simplest way to get going is to pick up an XT-IDE card. It *just* does IDE. All of your existing floppy, MFM, serial and parallel stuff is not affected at all by it.

You're over thinking it. Get the XT-IDE card (of whatever type you want), install it alongside your existing setup.

Hi thanks would this work? https://texelec.com/product/isa-compactflash-adapter/
sorry but i dont know a lot about these computer and cant afford to waste money buying the wrong one atm.

or is this one better https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/124698445164?_trk … 5.c101197.m1850

they seem very pricey

A normal IDE multi i/o card shouldwork with X-IDE bios in a eprom fitted to the network cards boot rom socket.

Hi i dont know how to do that or flash eroms
i just want a easy way to use a cf card as a hard drive
i did not know it was going to be so hard i might just sell the computer cause its just getting too complicated

Just buy the Tex elec adapter.

Hi all i have bought this https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/124698445164 please tell me it will work 🤣

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-06-01, 10:59:

To use an IDE drive (be that a CF card or a spinning 3.5" HDD), you are going to need an IDE BIOS; and it appears that your system doesn't have support since you say it only works with MFM drives - your options are:

I'm probably being nitpicky here, but I'm pretty sure if the original BIOS works with MFM drives it can work with IDE drives as well. As far as I recall, from a software point of view, an AT class system can't really tell the difference between the two. The IBM AT came out in 1984 (before IDE), and you can use IDE drives on that with the original BIOS.
The real problem is that the drive geometry supported in most of these old ATs is pre-defined and really limited...but you should be able to get around that limitation by using a drive overlay. (anyone know if there are compatibility issues between flash memory cards and overlays?)

Swapping in (or adding) another BIOS is still recommended (to save yourself headaches), but in theory it should still be possible to just stick with the original BIOS (plus overlay) if you really wanted to go that route.

i forgot all about drive overlays
could work but you would need a drive working first to install the overlay??

I forget the exact procedure, but from what I can recall as long as the drive is mechanically sound, the overlay software installed from a floppy disk should take care of the rest (formatting, modifying the MBR etc.)
I thought that some overlay software required the drive type to be set to a certain common geometry (type 9), but maybe that's actually not the case and it doesn't care at all. Anyway, there's no harm in trying.