Getting storage onto an 8-bit ISA PC usually means XT-IDE or an XT-CF adapter. This card does the same job a different way — a CH376-based USB-to-ISA design, bought directly from Elijah Miller (EMM Computers, homebrew8088.com) at the same time as my Homebrew 8088 board.
What it is
An 8-bit ISA card built around the CH376 USB controller chip — Elijah’s own design, rather than a PicoMEM, XT-IDE, or XT-CF board. It presents a USB stick to DOS as a fixed disk. Elijah’s own reasoning for recommending it over the alternatives: he’d built and sold this card before, hadn’t tested the PicoMEM himself and had heard of at least one buyer having trouble with it, and wasn’t sure about CF adapters either.
Setting it up
It shipped with a USB stick pre-loaded with DOS 6.22. The one real requirement: the USB drive has to be formatted FAT16 — a DOS limitation — which caps how large a usable partition can be, and larger partitions run slower.