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XT-IDE on an AT clone: should this work?

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First post, by elco-os

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Hi everyone!

I have an old computer which i want to restore.
It is a 'AT Compact 2' made by the dutch company Tulip. It is in fact an IBM clone running on a 80286 processor.

I have used this PC a lot when i was a child. It has been stored away for a long time, but when i tried it, the old MFM hard drive was stuck.
(Fortunatly i have some backups.) So now i am wondering how i can get this to work again without having to boot from floppy every time.

I found out about the XT-IDE project and i was wondering if this will work for this pc. I have multiple slots free, and I can remove the MFM controller since the hard drive doesn't work anymore.
It would be nice to have this old pc boot from a CF card like it did from its old hard drive. However i am not sure if that would work with this pc, since it is an AT, not a XT and also is an IBM clone.

Is there anyone who could help me with this?

Reply 1 of 2, by jasa1063

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I have run a XTIDE with a compact flash on a 386sx with no problem. Both through a Blue Lava Systems XTIDE adapter with built in Compact Flash and using an XTIDE BIOS and a regular IDE internface. I had no problems with either one.

Reply 2 of 2, by jakethompson1

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Well there are two issues. There is the XT-IDE Universal BIOS which solves any software compatibility issues along with the 504MB barrier.

Just because you use the BIOS doesn't mean you have to also use the XT-IDE card. Because the XT-IDE card is only 8-bit, it is slower than a 16-bit IDE interface card. Depending on how the cards are set up on your system you could get an ISA card with nothing on it but an IDE interface, or get an ISA I/O card and disable any functions on it that duplicate other cards (like serial/parallel/game).

Since there are a lot of circuit board designers on here, a design for an I/O card with primary+secondary IDE, floppy, parallel, and two 16550A serial ports would be nice if anyone's bored, especially if there were a way to make it reliable with CompactFlash adapters and SATA-to-IDE adapters...

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