ISA-PCI Conversion possible? (About MS's PC 98 Specs) - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

4 Apr 1998

...
 I definitely won't say it's impossible -- at my
age I've given up
making judgements like that on technical matters.  I will say that
it's a non-trivial problem and likely to produce underwhelming
performance compared to native PCI boards.  My own preference is Yeah, but very few
PCI boards are actually running at the full PCI specs.
I've even seen some PCI versions of ISA boards that work at exactly the same
speed as their ISA counterpart.
...
 to keep at least one machine (like I would ever cut it
down to
that!) to which the old equipment is native and network it to the
newer equipment as I acquire it.  Then again, I don't pay a lot of
attention to MS's hardware specs, since the only times I run their
software is to play games or to figure out how to get something
running in DOSEMU or WABI under Linux -- most of my emulators of Well, as
unimportant as they may seem to you, their hardware specs will
influence your x86 Linux machines, unless a vendor's smart enough to make
ISA/PCI/AGP boards.
...
 old 8-bit equipment (Tandy, Apple, Atari, etc.) work
just fine
that way, and I really _don't need_ the bells and whistles in the
latest Microsoft Office(tm) suite except when an employer insists
upon it at work, and eight times out of ten I manage to get
around it there as well. You're right, but still, like I said, you may be
ISA-less.  It's time that
we killed the bus, I agree, but allowing a smooth migration would help alot.
For instance, my AWE 64's been on my machine for under a week.  Now, if I
were to get an all-PCI system, I'd loose my *new* soundcard.  ISA's
outdated, my SB isn't.
    Ciao,

Tim D. Hotze