Is it possible I really need some driver to load on that DOS boot to enable the controller. Once the controller activated, the Hard Disk might be recognized and things will be visible to PC and then thru Bridgeboard to the AMIGA.
So it my roadblock is the fact that the HD Controller isn't activated in DOS? (I assume it doesn't just get recognized with On board firmware and picked up on the PC side Bus as a available Drive)
A vanilla DOS disk booting upcould not pick up a PC hard drive without the means to access it. This was put into BIOS on a real PC. On a Bridgeboard, the BIOS was fixed I think. You could not change it? Or maybe you can hack the thing, I don't know. You usually needed a device entry on config.sys at the time. Welcome to the stone age.
But I would have thought a PC hard drive and controller of the time would have shipped with a floppy. PC or Amiga. Only later were controllers added to motherboards on real PCs.
I think the way it worked was, the Amiga side hacked off the PC side to access the PC hardware, so yes, you would need the drivers installed on the PC side.
With a DOS disk or a Bridgeboard.
Maybe just a Bridgeboard. If CBM had a generic ISA drieer that could access the controller directly, and there was a standard way to do that with that type of expansion, the PC could be just turned on and you could access it with Janus. I'm not convinced it could handle any ISA expansion, but if just HD controller type, then I guess maybe it could. Didn't really need it's own individual controller for the card as such. Genreic ISA-HD, connect, pump data.
There maybe hacks for doing some of that, and I call them hacks because it is very very naughty, technicaly. Some places, anyway.