PCI TO ISA Adaptors

[K1 CERB]

I have been asked by a customer to supply a PC that includes a ISA Slot. They have some form of Lighting/Blind controls that I assume is controlled from this.

It would appear that 'off the shelf' PCs do not include ISA ports anymore, with PCI taking control.

Are there any manufacturers of PCI to ISA Adaptor cards? I have trawled the net & found 1, but they seemed to want to know the in's and out's (literally) of the system.

K1 CERB

[Munter]

Oddly my current company (until friday) has just been asked to fix a HMI on a pc which is using ISA cards to talk to it's PLC and running Win98!. We've quoted to replace the pc...

[dilbert]

You may get a card, but the thing is that much of the PCI stuff is plug and play because the computer assigns interrupts, the memory map, IO ports to the card. With ISA it worked the other way around. The card was configured to take static resources from the system before it was plugged in.

Then you have the factor that many ISA cards did not implement the full set of ISA features. It was entirely extensible. Is the ISA card XT or AT for example?

To get the ISA map to work seamlessly with the PCI scheme can be tricky. It depend very much on what you're working with. Maybe it would be easier to interface a PCI IO card with their blinds?

If your ISA IO card has a boot EPROM on it you may be lucky and find find that configuration is easy. If they're going to upgrade the OS from Windows 3.1 to Win 9x/NT, or from Win 9x/NT to Win 2K, then they're going to be having troubles with drivers anyway.

Edited by dilbert on Tuesday 12th December 10:11

[ThePassenger]

I haven't seen a motherboard coming with an ISA in quite a while. Although some of the high end Socket A (Athlon) boards did for a while. Do they do a PCI version of this control card?

I suspect the company you've found that wants to know everything about the computer before they sell you something is so they can tweak the design for the chipset as PCI doesn't operate at the same voltages/frequencies as ISA so their converter card would need adjusting per machine.

[malman]

You can still get these

www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/P4/E7210/P4SCA.cfm

None in stock but estimated delivery from computer2000 22/12/06 (hmm pinch of salt on that one I think)

Edited by malman on Tuesday 12th December 11:19

Edited by malman on Tuesday 12th December 11:20

[annodomini2]

K1 CERB said:

I have been asked by a customer to supply a PC that includes a ISA Slot. They have some form of Lighting/Blind controls that I assume is controlled from this.

It would appear that 'off the shelf' PCs do not include ISA ports anymore, with PCI taking control.

Are there any manufacturers of PCI to ISA Adaptor cards? I have trawled the net & found 1, but they seemed to want to know the in's and out's (literally) of the system.

K1 CERB

How are they interfaced?

Digital I/O?
Analogue Signals?

Any branding on the Card?

May be able to get a PCI equivalent

[K1 CERB]

I've asked my Client the questions about I/O configuration. software requirements and specific programs they may be running...I knew this would be a difficult!!!

K1 CERB

[bigdods]

You need something like this

www.avantek.co.uk/acl/mobo/p4_isa.htm

Dont know if they are in stock but worth a look

or here - these guys specialise in ISA motherboards to support just the kind of application you are talking about

www.portwell.co.uk/html/motherboards/motherboards.htm

Edited by bigdods on Tuesday 12th December 23:17