Looking for an 8 bit FDC...

[Chuck Guzis]

On 10/25/2005 at 2:31 PM Joe R. wrote:

>   It sounds like you need a CompatiCard!  Has anyone tried to reproduce
>these?

The old Compaticard I and II used a non-standard way of changing density,
so I'd stay away from these.  The CC IV wasn't that different (as far as
the basic hardware) from many, many other "use high-density drives on your
XT" boards. 

FWIW, unless you need the DIP switches and absolute reconfigurability,
there are many old alternate-source cards that will work just fine.   Most
will at least support 37x as an alternate port.  The OmniBridge and WD Fox
1002A come to mind as branded products; there were many other "white box"
controllers that did just as well.  At one point, Don Maslin and I tried to
compile an exhaustive list, but when you started including floppy+hard disk
controllers, there were just too many.  (e.g., the DTC 3280 SCSI controller
has a very nice floppy controller on it).   Some were better in handling
odd formats than any of the CC's.

Up until last year, we had a pile of NOS CC IV's.  I could not believe that
people were willing to pay $150 for a fairly garden-variety ISA card, but
we sold them out very quickly at that price.

Cheers,
Chuck