[Coco] Q: Burke & Burke hard disk controller

[Steven Hirsch]

I just received the Burke & Burke CoCo XT drive controller I won in Sean's 
auction.  Turns out that it's basically an adapter that ties a vanilla 
PC-Bus 8-bit WD-1002 drive controller (complete with mount bracket!) to 
the CoCo bus.  Very cool.

Now, the question that pops into my head is:  What are the chances that an 
8-bit IDE controller would work with this unit?  Particularly in the early 
days of IDE drives, such controllers were intended to be register 
compatible with the WD-1002 family adapters (the standard for XT and AT 
hard drive attachment).

Although I have plenty of older MFM drives to keep it fed and happy, it 
would be really super to be able to use an IDE.  I'm guessing it will need 
to be an IDE that could do 8-bit transfers, which still implies an older 
unit.  Or, will a 16-bit IDE drive work while throwing away half its 
capacity (no access to the upper byte of data)?

Anyone have ideas on the subject?

Steve


--