Possible to speed up I/O subsystem of 5150?

From: Patrick Finnegan <pat_at_computer-refuge.org>
Date: Fri Jan 7 10:19:43 2005

On Thursday 06 January 2005 18:44, Jim Leonard wrote:
> Patrick Finnegan wrote:
> >> There was one 8-bit ISA hard disk controller card for the IBM
> >> PC or XT that would do a 1:1 interleave, from Patterson Labs.
> >> Don't know how they did it, but they worked. They were always
> >> unusual, probably impossible to find today, but Google it.
> >>
> >> RLL was way too fast for the PC/XT bus at 1:1 interleave, but
> >>there was at least one 8-bit controller from Seagate that worked
> >> with only one 30 MB IDE drive. I don't remember the numbers.
> >> They would work with a higher interleave, 3 or 4 sounds about
> >> right.
> >
> > Why not just get a SCSI controller? Surely you can get an AHA-1542
> > or something to work on an 8-bit bus, and it'll probably have
> > better performance (and easier to find disks) than any IDE or
> > MFM/RLL (ST-506) controller for the era.
>
> I believe the AHA-1542 (and B, C, and CF) were all 16-bit boards,
> whereas I'm trying to increase the I/O of an 8-bit IBM 5150...

Well, I've had good luck with using 16-bit cards (mostly VGA) in 8-bit
machines (mostly 5150s and 5160s). You could try it out; it might
actually work just fine.

Pat
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Received on Fri Jan 07 2005 - 10:19:43 GMT

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