[Coco] Q: Burke & Burke hard disk controller

[Steven Hirsch]

On Tue, 30 Sep 2008, Ciaran Anscomb wrote:

> Steven Hirsch wrote:
>>
>> Or, will a 16-bit IDE drive work while throwing away half its
>> capacity (no access to the upper byte of data)?
>
> Yes, this definitely works.  I recently picked up an IDE/CompactFlash
> interface off Ebay for the BBC Master, and it is an 8-bit interface.
> 8 bits of each 16-bit transfer are simply discarded.
>
> Looking around a bit revealed that at least the most common ATA commands
> are all contained within 8 bits.

Good, I thought I remembered hearing this from an Apple 2 owner.  There 
are several IDE adapters for that platform, but almost no availability of 
IDE hard drives with support for 8-bit data transfer.

It's "iffy" whether the B&B support software will recognize the 
controller, but trying it won't hurt anything.

Steve


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