> And, that won't work, either. The BIOS in older machines will not work > right at ALL with a high capacity drive. > In some cases you will get a usable volume with vastly reduced > capacity, but in most cases it will just not recognize the drive at > all. I'm not talking about original AT's here, but mid-90's 386 and > 486 systems. > I can only imagine a real AT would be even less likely to handle a > drive over about 40 MB.
This is really not a big issue. All you need is a BIOS on the IDE controller card. It was very common back in the day that many add-in drive controllers had their own BIOS so you are not even breaking new ground here. In fact someone far more talented then I could probably design a 16bit controller card w/ its own BIOS that also has the PATA -> SATA adapter interface built in all on one card and your 5170 can be rocking an SSD drive! Heck the XT-IDE project practically does this already with a CF or SD card plugged into the card...
