Aitor Gómez Wants to Give Your IBM PC/XT or Compatible a Major Storage Upgrade with the XTSSD

Vintage computing enthusiast Aitor Gómez has put together a drop-in upgrade which brings the benefits of modern solid-state storage technology to vintage IBM Personal Computer XTs (PC/XTs) and compatibles: the eight-bit XTSSD ISA card.

"This bootable expansion card provides an mSATA SSD interface to eight-bit ISA systems such as [the IBM] PC/XT, or an IDE interface," Gómez writes of his creation. "An mSATA SSD interface will always be quiet, and more reliable than an old mechanical hard drive."

The IBM PC/XT launched in 1983 as the follow-up to the original IBM Personal Computer. Built around an Intel 8088 processor running at 4.77MHz, the device came with up to 20MB of internal storage — using, as was the standard at the time, physically spinning platters. Today, surviving IBM PC/XTs are rarely running on original hard drives — and the XTSSD serves as a great alternative.

"The version which I publish […] combines most of the logic in an SPLD [Simple Programmable Logic Device, the Microchip] ATF16V8B, from which addressing of the [Microchip] 28C64B [parallel EEPROM], as well I/O [Input/Output] port of the XTSD interface, are established," Gómez explains of his design, which builds on a larger open source board designed by Monotech-PCs — and which in turn was built atop the Glitch Works XT-IDE controller.

In addition to playing host for a modern mSATA solid-state drive, the low-profile XTSSD card can also serve as an IDE controller for other storage devices and as a host for a boot ROM — though, its creator notes, you can't use an external IDE device and the on-board mSATA at the same time.

Gómez has published design files for the project on GitHub under the reciprocal GNU General Public License 3; assembled boards are available to purchase from his Tindie store at $53.95, mSATA SSD not included.