Subj : Re: MS-DOS HDDs and partitions
To   : Abbub
From : paulie420
Date : Sun Apr 16 2023 15:11:18

 Ab> XTIDE themselves aren't hard to get, but you probably don't really want
 Ab> an XTIDE card for your 486 because they're 8-bit cards. What you want is
 Ab> a network card or an IDE Multi I/O card with an empty boot ROM socket.
 Ab> The later, the IDE Multi I/O card with an actual socket are the things
 Ab> that are hard to get. Network cards with a rom socket are relatively
 Ab> easy to come by these days and work great. Then you can just get a
 Ab> EEPROM with the 386+ version of the XTIDE universal BIOS, stick it in
 Ab> the network card, and it'll take over drive translations for you.

Understood 90% of this reply and think I'll be researching the 'best' 486 solution - thanks for filling me in on a few parts of it. Ultimately, I want a CFCard w/ several paritions - each of which I can boot into w/ different OSes on it. 

For NOW, I ordered a few 500mb CFCards so I can just exchange them and build systems on each one.

 Ab> Also, if you're manually copying .IMG files to floppy disks, I *highly*
 Ab> recommend you look into getting a Gotek with the FlashFloppy firmware on
 Ab> it. It'll make your life *way* easier.

Oh - I know, and appreicate the Gotek suggestion; I looked at it but chose CFCard for a few reasons... this particular 486 has a network card w/ ethernet that I can transfer files over, and I have a couple other solutions - I was really just catching video for a youtube thing later, and having fun doing so. :P 

But yes - and thanks for sharing the above... I don't know a lot about the different cards and solutions for new HDD solutions.



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