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A piece of curious hardware...

That actually is pretty interesting. I can see several different uses for something like that. Makes me want to get one jsut to run older SCSI things, and maybe even older controller cards for other things.

Thanks for the tip, now I know these things exist.
 
I wouldn't mind "adopting" one of those. :) Their mini power supply for them could be an interesting option for other things too.

Older SCSI is an idea. I've got an older scanner which I can't run on a modern machine because of the ISA SCSI card. What else would someone here use one of these for?
 
Maybe a controller card for say, an MFM hdd with an ISA card? The scanner idea is a really good one.

My friend from the Linux user group just had to go revamp a place he works for, they used all older hardware and a lot of it was ISA. I can see him using something like this to resurrect an old workplace.

Having a sperate monitor, maybe CGA or Herc. maybe monochrome?
 
I have one of those on my desk at work, been trying to get it to work with a CNC machine who's control card is 16bit ISA.

Its far from a perfect solution, the software is where it falls short, unless you have Window 98 (I have no idea about Linux support).

I suspect the problem with it is XP and newer does not allow direct hardware manipulation.
 
Well, running an old MFM drive, unless it's on a vintage machine anyway, would probably only be something you would do as a test or recovery exercise. You'd probably be better off sticking with an old main board anyway.

Having a sperate monitor, maybe CGA or Herc. maybe monochrome?
Click to expand...

Now you're talkin! I love monochrome monitors. I've got a whack of them stashed away, and a handful of old mono cards as well. To my eyes there is NO monitor that comes anywhere near the IBM 5151 in the quality of the phosphor. That soft green is very beautiful and friendly to my eyes. The slow speed of the phosphor is also an advantage when reading text. .... but I regress. :p What you're saying is that perhaps I could put a monochrome screen on a modern computer this way. Now THAT is a good idea!
 
Looks like a way to build an external enclosure for 5.25" FDDs, eg. to transfer files to old PCs from modern laptops...
 
I wonder if it might not be more straightforward to build a small x86 PC with USB interface and a meg of memory. What with the Nvidia 386SX single-chip PC and built-in ISA interface, it should be pretty simple.

This ad's been on the web for awhile for a PCI-ISA interface, but I don't know of anyone who actually has one.
 
A PCI-ISA interface might be a better solution for some things, especially a video card. I wonder what these things cost. The USB ones are really expensive if it's for private use.
 
Amazing, ISA on a modern computer. I guess that solves that problem. I have a feeling, though, that my dream of running something modern with a mono card (not VGA) would not be easily accommodated in software any more.

Slightly further afield: has anybody seen a TTL monochrome card for PCI?
 
There are no PCI mono cards that I know of. I don't think they even made any 16-bit ISA ones.

I've tried my mono card in some modern(ish) PCs with ISA slots with mixed results. Most would only recognise it if it was the only card in the system - as soon as you put in another graphics card (PCI, AGP, or on-board) then the mono card was no longer recognised. This is probably down to the BIOS on the VGA card, as I doubt many of them bother to check if a mono card is also present.
 
FishFinger said:
There are no PCI mono cards that I know of. I don't think they even made any 16-bit ISA ones.
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There's plenty of 16-bit ISA cards with two outputs: Analog to VGA monitors, and TTL to CGA/MDA/EGA ones.

BTW, just thinking: wouldn't it be possible to build a simple VGA->MDA converter? Probably all you need to do in hardware is amplify 0.7 V to 5 V. Of course, you also need 18 kHz Hsync/50 Hz Vsync, but it may be possible to set VGA card accordingly. I'm pretty sure that at least early SVGA chips can be set to 15 kHz Hsync/50 Hz Vsync, this was used for simple homemade VGA->TV converters.
 
I actually have one of these (with enclosure for full-length cards) on my xmas list. :p
 
FishFinger said:
This is probably down to the BIOS on the VGA card, as I doubt many of them bother to check if a mono card is also present.
Click to expand...

Traditionally, you could have mono and color cards in the same system and set which one would be the power-on default. However, after monochrome had largely disappeared from use, this feature was abandoned. I've got a Hercules in my Pentium, but there's no way to make it start up first. You just have to go into DOS and type MODE MONO to initialize the card. Also, you can't power on monochrome monitors until that, because an uninitialized card will kill them.

Another thing to consider is that monochrome cards have no BIOS of their own, and instead use the video routines in the main BIOS. Newer PCs may no longer have this code.
 
In most of my past DOS systems I've used both a VGA and a mono card. With both monitors plugged in, it doesn't really matter which one comes up first. I like being able to switch back and forth with the text remaining frozen on the previous one. It's very handy for keeping a manual visible or editing text. On my current DOS system, I just save video pages and flip back and forth using F11 and F12. It's not as efficient, but it saves having two monitors taking up space.
 
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