Hard Card
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Hard Cards were used by some PC vendors in the 1980's, such as Tandy and Amstrad, to provide hard disk storage to PCs that lacked any provision for a hard disk in their design.
'Hardcard' was originally a brand name of Plus Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Quantum, but within months of the original models release there were nearly 30 vendors producing similar products and hence the term has became used generically to refer to any hard disk on a card.
The 'hard card' consisted of:
- A steel bracket designed to fill a full-length ISA card slot
- An ISA driver interface card (usually 8-bit) including the necessary boot option ROM
- A hard disk drive mounted on it's side, typically between 20 and 40MB but with some models up to 105MB.
As the hard drive became a standard fitment, and with the advent of IDE, controller hardware was integrated into the system board, which bypassed the need for a hard card.