5 Apr
1998
5 Apr
'98
1:42 p.m.
Tim Hotze scribbled...
the old ISA cards I've collected, I just got an AWE
64, and my scanner and
PCMCIA cards are ISA-based. So, is it possible to make a device that will
make an ISA card fit into a PCI socket? Is anyone making them?
No one that I know of. In fact, I question that such a device is even
economically possible to the point that a company would want to try. The
architecture differences between PCI and ISA are enormous.
The only thing I can think of that -might- stand a chance of working is to
construct some sort of sub-board that the ISA card would plug into. Said
sub-board would contain the necessary circuitry to implement an ISA-to-PCI
bridge.
This means, at bare minimum, dealing with a 220-lead surface-mount PQFP
chip and its supporting components. That means lots of skill in engineering
such bridges, to say nothing of having access to schematic capture and PC
board layout tools that can handle advanced boards...
Well, you get the idea. I'm not going to say "it can't be done" because
I
think it can. It's just that I have neither the skill nor the desire to
attempt it. ;-)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bruce Lane, Sysop, The Dragon's Cave BBS (Fidonet 1:343/272)
(Hamateur: WD6EOS) (E-mail: kyrrin(a)jps.net)
"Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own
human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."
6 Apr
6 Apr
10:54 p.m.
Bruce Lane wrote:
Tim Hotze scribbled...
Sure you would need a bridge chip, but on PCI motherboards the ISA bus is
actually connected to the PCI bus via just such a bridge, rather than directly
to the processor as in AT designs; so evidently it isn't too expensive to do
that. I think it also allows for some flexibility in moving ports, memory
addresses, irq's etc. around, for ISA devices on a PCI bus. That helped make
PnP possible for non-PnP cards (ISA PnP cards also comply to a standard which
allows the system to query which parameters can be changed, and then change
them).
Somebody ought to make an expansion chassis, like the old IBM PC expansion
chassis, that plugs into a card on the PCI bus. That would be handy for
people with lots of cards, more so than individual converter boards, and the
higher retail price would allow a higher profit margin too.
Alternatively, running out of ISA slots is a great excuse to get a second
machine. If you run Linux, it becomes much easier to share resources between
PC's over a network.
--
_______ KB7PWD @ KC7Y.AZ.US.NOAM ecloud(a)bigfoot.com
(_ | |_) Shawn T. Rutledge http://www.bigfoot.com/~ecloud
__) | | \_____________________________________________________________
the old ISA cards I've collected, I just got
an AWE 64, and my scanner and
PCMCIA cards are ISA-based. So, is it possible to make a device that will
make an ISA card fit into a PCI socket? Is anyone making them?
No one that I know of. In fact, I question that such a device is even
economically possible to the point that a company would want to try. The
architecture differences between PCI and ISA are enormous.
The only thing I can think of that -might- stand a chance of working is to
construct some sort of sub-board that the ISA card would plug into. Said
sub-board would contain the necessary circuitry to implement an ISA-to-PCI
bridge.
This means, at bare minimum, dealing with a 220-lead surface-mount PQFP
chip and its supporting components. That means lots of skill in engineering
such bridges, to say nothing of having access to schematic capture and PC
board layout tools that can handle advanced boards...
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