XTIDE Universal BIOS

XTIDE Universal BIOS makes it possible to use modern large ATA hard disks or Compact Flash cards on old PC's. You can then enjoy quiet or noiseless drives with more capacity than you'll ever need for old computers.

XTIDE Universal BIOS can be used on any IBM PC, XT, AT or 100% compatible system. On AT systems you can use any 16-bit ISA or VLB IDE or Multi I/O controller. For XT systems you can use XTIDE rev1 (not available anymore), XTIDE rev2 or JR-IDE/ISA. If you want to use CF cards or Microdrives and do not need hard drive support, then Lo-Tech XT-CF is the best option.

Features

Some of the features included in XTIDE Universal BIOS are...

Supports up to 4 IDE controllers
Support for virtual drives via serial port, more information
Supports drives with any capacity (MS-DOS 7.x (Windows 9x) or FreeDOS is required to access more than 8.4 GB)
PIO transfers with block mode support
Hard disk autodetection
Autodetected capacity, both CHS and LBA, can be overridden to make drive appear smaller than it actually is
Hotkeys and optional Boot menu (included in official 15k builds) for selecting any floppy drive or hard disk to boot from, including hard disks that are not handled by XTIDE Universal BIOS
Compact Flash and Microdrive support
Support for most 8-, 16-, and 32-bit IDE controllers
Native support for QDI Vision QD6500 and QD6580 VLB IDE controllers

...and many more.

Picture 1. User friendly configurator and flashing program for XTIDE Universal BIOS.

Video 1. Partitioning 6 GB Hitachi Microdrive with DOS 6.22 Boot Disk.