A 8 bit hardcard is just an 8bit MFM or RLL controller card with a bracket for a matching hard drive.
In the mists of time (sometime in the 2000s) I took an image of an ST238R hard drive by plugging the ST11R adapter into a 486 box running an old version of Linux (most likely Slackware 4.0).
I recompiled the (2.2) kernel to include CONFIG_DEV_BLK_XD which supports XT hard disc controllers. System booted off the main IDE system disc, I then used dd to create an image of the file.
Note that support for xt controllers was pulled after kernel version 3.8
To find out if the controller on the Hardcard+ is compatible, the best bet is to look at the header that the option ROM spits out and then look at the Linux kernel source (https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.2/ look in drivers/block/xt.c and search for XD_SIGNATURE)
I were to do this job again in 2024, I would install the hard card in a 386/486/Pentium box with an ISA network card, create a pair of Slackware 4.0[1] root[2]+boot[3] floppies, boot from the floppies, confirm that the kernel can see the XT drive [4] configure networking[5] and mount an NFS share on a server[6], capture the partition table data using the output of fdisk -l , dump the whole hard drive using dd, dump individual partitions using dd, then shutdown.
[1] Slackware 4.0 because the root floppy contains the stuff needed to do the NFS, a full install to a virtual machine can be done in under 10 minutes, and the kernel compiled from scratch takes less than 10 minutes on a VM.
[2] Steal the config file for the net.i kernel from https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/ftp.slack … /kernels/net.i/ , then enable CONFIG_DEV_BLK_XD and recompile
[3] Use the text.gz root image. If that has networking/NFS binaries missing, use the pcmcia image instead.
[4] cat /proc/partitions and look for "xda" entries.
[5] ifconfig eth0 <ip> netmask <netmask> up
[6] /sbin/rpc.portmap ; mkdir /mnt/nfs ; mount <server ip>:/path/to/nfsshare /mnt/nfs
I used a variation of this method a few months ago to dump the hard drive of a telecoms tester running Windows 95. The hard drive was installed inside a chassis which would require a complete dismantle to access (not practical for just a backup). The box had two PCMCIA card slots, a 3.5" floppy drive, and no USB sockets.
With a 3C589 PCMCIA card installed, I used the bare.u and pcmcia.gz images to boot into Linux, and the steps below to dump the drive.
(I also tried dumping to a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter, but had issues with the card geometry that couldn't be bothered to fix and moved straight on to NFS)
Login as root
ifconfig eth0 192.168.0.245 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
Ping from server side to check (no ping on root disk).
/sbin/rpc.portmap
mount 192.168.0.3:/home/data/backup /mnt
cd /mnt
mkdir <backup dir>
cd <backup dir>
The only hiccup was that the NFS client refused to create files larger than 1Gb, and the hard drive was 1.something.
The workaround was to use to commands to dump the C drive partition dd if=/dev/hda1 of=/mnt/nfs/hda1-1.dd bs=512 followed by dd if=/dev/hda1 if=hda1-2 bs=512 skip=2097152
Note that for an xt drive the device names will be called xda (whole disc) , xda1 (first partition) not hda.
Hope this is useful.
