Hardcard

The Hardcard supplies its own host adapter, and doesn't require an empty drive bay.

[8] The Hardcard provided the computer industry with the first one-inch-thick HDD,[5] but it was an interface and form factor only compatible with the full length card slot of the ISA[9] bus first introduced with the IBM PC.

As such it had a thicker head disk assembly[10] than the subsequently introduced 1-inch high standard form factor 31⁄2-inch HDDs.

It was a complete 5.25 inch half-height HDD with an integrated controller and drive electronics on the same printed circuit board with a SASI interface.

At that time, all of the other products were using a standard hard drive with a 1.6-inch height forcing the card to hang over the adjacent PC slot.

The hard drive was located on the opposite side away from the connector sometimes enabling a short half-length expansion card to be installed in the adjacent slot.

A hard card must be no more than 10 inches long and use an 8-bit ISA interface to work in a Tandy 1000 computer.