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From: Dan Lenski on 25 Aug 2009 00:21
On Aug 24, 9:09 pm, "Fishface" <fishf...(a)invalid.invalid> wrote:
> Dan Lenski wrote:
> > I'm in charge of a piece of scientific equipment that uses an old
> > Pentium III computer (running Windows 2000) as its controller.
> > The computer is, needless to say, slow and annoying to use.
>
> What speed is the PIII processor?  Slot 1 or Socket 370?  Tualation
> adapter and 1.4 GHz CPU still too slow?

I'll have to double-check which socket it uses. What is the Tualation
adapter?

> Sounds like that is too much, also?  Seems reasonable to me for a
> specialty board.  Economy of scale sort of thing.

Oh yeah, I think the iBase prices are perfectly reasonable, only
$200-250 more than what you'd get a similar mobo for without the ISA
slot. I was quite shocked to find that there's *anything* available
with an ISA slot still, besides maybe some old stock and some
industrial PCs.

> > And that's it... basically only one vendor, and only one processor
> > family supported.  I haven't found any others that support AMD
> > processors at all.  No Socket AM2/AM2+/AM3/F.  Does anyone
> > know of any motherboards for modern AMD processors that have
> > ISA slots?  Is there any technical impediment to producing one...
> > such as lack of chipset support?
>
> Why exactly did you prefer AMD?

Well, I personally prefer AMD products, and I was thinking that if I
found an AMD board I could probably get a processor for somewhat less,
but otherwise I was mostly just hoping to find better availability of
ISA products, in case the ones I've found turned out to be problematic
or incompatible.

Dan
From: Dan Lenski on 25 Aug 2009 00:24
On Aug 24, 9:24 pm, daytripper <day_tri...(a)NOSPAMyahoo.com> wrote:
> ISA is more dead than...Franco. So yes, chipset support is pretty much over
> and out. I'm surprised you actually found *anyone* selling otherwise
> reasonably current motherboards sporting an ISA slot.

Hehe, well I expect many of the other users are, like me, supporting
5-6 figure scientific instruments that can't be upgraded without
extortionate fees paid to the manufacturers.

Also, I think ISA lives on, basically unchanged at the logical level,
in the form of Low-pin Count bus used for other low-speed and "legacy"
devices like FDD, serial port, parallel port, BIOS ROM, PS/2 mouse and
keyboard, and thermal/fan sensors. So I would think that many
southbridges have the pins that could be attached to some kind of ISA
bus, if only there was a connector there!

> I say you should cross yourself at least three times and thank whatever deity
> you believe in that Ibase is going to save you a shitload of cash, and just
> buy one of their C2D DDR2 boards and call it a day...

Well, this is probably what we're gonna do :-)

Dan
From: DevilsPGD on 25 Aug 2009 01:02
In message <83f695dv9f26eoi10varpjr1qnsu08eraj(a)4ax.com> daytripper
<day_trippr(a)NOSPAMyahoo.com> was claimed to have wrote:

>I say you should cross yourself at least three times and thank whatever deity
>you believe in that Ibase is going to save you a shitload of cash, and just
>buy one of their C2D DDR2 boards and call it a day...

I'd probably buy three or four, since such beasts won't be available for
too much longer.
From: Benjamin Gawert on 25 Aug 2009 01:26
* Dan Lenski:
> I'm in charge of a piece of scientific equipment that uses an old
> Pentium III computer (running Windows 2000) as its controller. The
> computer is, needless to say, slow and annoying to use.

Have you considered just upgrading it? Parts for a P3 should be
obtainable for almost free today. Or get a better P3 computer.

> We'd like to upgrade to a newer computer, but here's the catch: it
> needs to have 3 PCI slots and 1 ISA slot (yech) to interface with the
> instrument. The equipment manufacturer is okay with us replacing the
> computer, by the way. (Replacing the ISA interface card would cost
> $10,000, so that's pretty much out of the question for us.)
>
> So does anyone know where I can get a modern motherboard with ISA
> slots?

Yes. Kontron (www.kontron.com) does make several ISA-based solutions.
However, they are not cheap.

Sadly you didn't provide more details as to what card you want to use.
Maybe it is cheaper (and in the longer term more cost effecive) to just
replace the ISA card and use a standard mainboard without ISA.

Benjamin
From: Dan Lenski on 25 Aug 2009 03:37
On Aug 25, 1:26 am, Benjamin Gawert <bgaw...(a)gmx.de> wrote:
> * Dan Lenski:
>  > I'm in charge of a piece of scientific equipment that uses an old
>  > Pentium III computer (running Windows 2000) as its controller.  The
>  > computer is, needless to say, slow and annoying to use.
>
> Have you considered just upgrading it? Parts for a P3 should be
> obtainable for almost free today. Or get a better P3 computer.

Yeah, I mean it's not THAT expensive to do a full upgrade. We can go
from P3 clunker to screaming Core 2 Quad beast with 4gb of DDR3 RAM
and dual NICs and 500gb hard drive in about $750. Also, did I mention
the horrifically noisy PSU and ugly case which we'd be replacing as
well? :-)

>  > We'd like to upgrade to a newer computer, but here's the catch: it
>  > needs to have 3 PCI slots and 1 ISA slot (yech) to interface with the
>  > instrument.  The equipment manufacturer is okay with us replacing the
>  > computer, by the way.  (Replacing the ISA interface card would cost
>  > $10,000, so that's pretty much out of the question for us.)
>  >
>  > So does anyone know where I can get a modern motherboard with ISA
>  > slots?
>
> Yes. Kontron (www.kontron.com) does make several ISA-based solutions.
> However, they are not cheap.
>
> Sadly you didn't provide more details as to what card you want to use.
> Maybe it is cheaper (and in the longer term more cost effecive) to just
> replace the ISA card and use a standard mainboard without ISA.

It's one of these awful custom cards, seemingly unique to the
instrument manufacturer. It is basically a glorified GPIO port, as
far as I can tell... but it's *their* glorified GPIO port, and no one
else knows exactly how it works. They want $10,000 to replace the ISA
card with a newer PCI version. Yes, $10,000. Scientific equipment
manufacturers are ridiculous, especially when they choose to use
custom cards. Thankfully, that's becoming less prevalent as standard
serial/USB/Firewire interfaces are increasingly provided. Either that
or GPIB... which is basically a glorified serial port with an
extremely bulky cable, costing "only" hundreds of dollars for the
interface card.

</rant>

Here's another oddball product: ISA to USB. http://www.arstech.com/item--usb2isa.html
Any guesses about possible compatibility pitfalls with such a beast?
Thanks for the advice so far!

Dan
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