Running my A2386SX BridgeBoard in my favorite Amiga 2000 with the hardfile solution had the disadvantage I was not able to read/write my CF card in my modern PC. Copying files with a modern PC is much faster. Simon Vergauwen of the Belgian Amiga Club advised me to install a dedicated multi I/O card for several reasons:
1st reason is that the IDE controller is working faster than the hardfile solution
2nd reason the FAT partition is accessible on modern computers
3rd reason is that mouse support via the bridgeboard is slow and having a dedicated serial port for your PC mouse is working better
4th reason is if you can find a game port it is complete for DOS gaming
Thanks to Bart van den Akker from the Home Computer Museum for providing this 16 bit ISA HDD multi I/O controller.






I experienced some challenges. The onboard floppy disk controller had to be disabled otherwise the BridgeBoard was not able to handle the conflict between the two controllers. The jumper for disabling the FloppyDisk Controller on the UMC was JP7, I changed it from 1-2 to 2-3.
The BridgeBoard can not handle big hard drives and/or partitions. You have to set the harddrive type in the BIOS (CTRL-ALT-ESC) of the A2386SX to 9.
I had to use the tool EZ-Disk 8 to prepare and format the harddisk, in my case a 4 GB CF Card connected to my CF Card IDE bracket. I tried other versions but they didn’t handle it well. EZDisk 8 is working fine.












When this proces is done the system will be rebooted after pressing ESC.







It is nice to know that the first partition is fully accessible in my Windows 10 PC while the second isn’t. That is no issue for me as 2 GB is enough to transfer files between my modern PC and the A2386SX.
Information:
http://pcrebuilding.altervista.org/9/download/5714b6c8f1a8a_umc_um82c86_isa_controller.pdf