Adding more ISA slots

[evildragon]

Is there any kind of device that could make an ISA slot in my model 25, to say an external box to add more slots from it? My model 25 only has 2 ISA slots, and both are populated with an IDE card and an ethernet card, and I really want to add a SoundBlaster to the mix also.

 

[hexsane]

Alternately you can get a parallel port ethernet adapter. Not blazing fast but if you're just using ethernet for transfers its a good way to go.

-Matt

 

[pearce_jj]

Could the last slot be daisy-chained onto an expansion board?

For example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BP-6S-6-Slot-ISA-Backplane-Board-/200498589184

(I have no idea, this I'm just wondering.)

 

[MaTel]

Could the last slot be daisy-chained onto an expansion board?

For example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BP-6S-6-Slot-ISA-Backplane-Board-/200498589184

(I have no idea, this I'm just wondering.)

This board looks like a ISA-Backplane for industrial use. I don't think that you can use this to expand your ISA-slots. This Board is for a CPU-card + additional ISA-cards.

Update:
@evildargon

Look at this

 

[mbbrutman]

I remember the topic of an ISA bus extender or adding ISA buses to slightly incompatible machines seems to appear fairly often.

A good place to start would be "Interfacing to the IBM Personal Computer" by Lewis C. Eggebrecht. Eggebrect was on the original team that designed the IBM PC and he discusses the PC bus in great detail in the book, including how to create expansions for it.

The IBM 5161 expansion unit is well engineered, but overkill for most machines. That includes two cards to buffer and redrive signals from the machine to the expansion unit. You can get by with much less, but a background in electrical engineering is probably necessary for all but the crudest hacks.

 

[EverythingIBM]

Is there any kind of device that could make an ISA slot in my model 25, to say an external box to add more slots from it? My model 25 only has 2 ISA slots, and both are populated with an IDE card and an ethernet card, and I really want to add a SoundBlaster to the mix also.

Another solution is getting an original PS/2 HDD and removing the IDE card.

 

[Chuck(G)]

It might be possible to fashion something with a ribbon cable and some edge connectors to expand a single ISA slot to two, but it would be pretty ugly. Without an expansion card set, you might be able to pass a short (<0.5m) ribbon cable out to an external box with a couple of ISA slots and perhaps a PSU.

Or you may want to investigate some 2-sided risers.

It wouldn't be cheap. You'd be better off spending your money on a parallel port ethernet adapter.

But all of that would be defeating what the 8525 was--a compact system with limited expandability mostly meant for the educational market.

 

[Maverick1978]

Get the PPT adapter. They're relatively cheap, and since you're already contemplating the expansion box, you're apparently ok with the idea of external electronics on the machine.

Of course, a 3rd option, as I sit her thinking, would be to use a boot disk and run the HD off of the IDE port on the Sound Blaster card (assuming that you used one that had those ports). Though, at the moment, I'm too tired to remember if the 8525 even has 16-bit ISA slots.......

 

[evildragon]

Another solution is getting an original PS/2 HDD and removing the IDE card.

That is a severely limited solution and already been there and frustrated to hell and back.. Besides, I rather like having a compact flash card being used in my model 25, on an XT-IDE board I built.

 

[evildragon]

I'll consider the use of a parallel port ethernet adapter. I don't use a printer at the moment.

 

[mbbrutman]

The Xircom PE3-10BT is what you want - it even works on the PS/2 Model 25, but not in bi-directional mode.

http://www.brutman.com/Dos_Networking/xircom_pe3.html


I think the ISA expansion box project would be pretty fun - I've done similar projects with the PCjr, another notoriously limited machine.