I recently got an Apple IIGS with… shall we say, issues. But that will be another post. Inside, however, were some pretty cool upgrades including an Applied Engineering RAM GS card with the full 1MB onboard, and an "Inner Drive 40 High Performance Hard Drive System."
This is really cool! Or it could be if it works… Sadly, not holding out much hope. The power connectiond to the drive were soldered directly to the underside of the drive, but came loose and made direct contact witht the metal casing. There's also a RIFA cap that needs replacing and a major case of dust contamination. Suffice it to say, I've got my work cut out for me, and that's not even addressing the computer's other problems (and there are a few!).
In any case, the drive was connected to an Applied Ingenuity Hard Drive controller card that appears to be a simple IDE controller, which has me wondering if I could use the card to connect to an alternative drive or maybe even a compact flash controller instead? Note: I'm not giving up on the drive/PSU yet, but I do have another IIGS and if the worst happens (ie: the drive, PSU and motherboard turn out to be a loss, can I still make use of the card as an internal storage solution for my other GS?
Here are some pictures of the card:
Does not look like it connects 16 data pins plus control as ATA requires; I only see 8 pins wired to the octal bus xcvr 74LS245. It might be a rarer interface like XT Attachment.
Mentioned before here.
Yes, that is a "standard" IDE controller card. But the firmware on it is specific to the 20 and 40 MB drives that it supported. While it could be possible to modify that (I actually did just that to support its use in the //c and later to support CF cards) it would probably not be worth the effort. Not when you compare with the simplicity and low cost of the many floppy and hard drive emulators available now. You might want to check out the CFFA, Xdrive, and even the FujiNet.
Understood, and thank you. I suppose I'm committed to fixing the whole thing.
Unless someone has already redone the firmware and my C64 can program the EPROM? Not holding out hope on that though.
I have an inner drive as well. Unfortunately the controller is an 8 bit controller not a 16 bit. 8 bit drives are hard to find.
Mine uses a WD 93048-X. I believe that the drive is the same as the common 16 bit WD 93048-A drives but the circuit board is different. When mine does die I’ll try a circuit board swap. Replacing a 40 year old HD with another 40 year old isn’t the best but I’d like to keep it going as is as long as possible.
If that doesn’t work, the other option is to use a MDT card.
it's worse than that; HDD manufacturers keep drive firmware on the platter. Swapping the drive electronics won't fix your problem.
That's not good news. Hopefully it keeps going but when it does I'll give it a try anyways. Nothing to lose.
I think that was not the case in the 1980s, when the firmware was comparatively simple.
Funny thing is that at this very moment I'm trying to resurrect one of my old CDrives. So I'm actually going down this path again. I do have the source code for the original InnerDrive firmware so I could probably tell you where in the EPROM you could make changes to accommodate different hard drives. But it still would be a crap shoot.
This card supports drives with an 8-bit XTA interface, not the 16-bit ATA interface.Theoretically, you could force an ATA drive to work, but you would only be able to use half its capacity.
This page has more information, including a list of hard drives with an XTA interface.
https://www.dosdays.co.uk/topics/xt_ide_vs_ide.php