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Intrest in new ISA cards?

glitch said:
I'd been asked by several people about doing a kit run of Sergey's FDC board, and had thought myself about doing it with the addition of at least a 34-pin edge connector added on, if not a 37-pin D-SUB....
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Jimmy said:
The 37 pin D sub would the good. I would be interested.
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deathshadow said:
...Last thing I need is another serial port...
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There's also the XT-FDC Picture HERE. An externally accessible 37 pin D sub can be used if the header on the right side of the picture is left off. I built one of these for my 5155 and it works great! This project kind of fizzled out early though before gaining much traction. I think boards for it can be bought HERE Scroll down to "Other (formerly known as "Mini") Boards" and the list shows that Tod Goodman has 40 of them for $12 each. I'm not sure how current that info is though.

Greg
 
Yes I know I have build two of them, one of them originally for Thomas (Betta-Blue) and the other for myself.

The one I have is in a 5160, I have not had any luck finding a card bracket for the 37 D-Sub connector.
Also in my 5160, I have to take the case off in order to pull in or remove the cable.

The XT-FDC version 1 had the 37 pin and the 34 pin reversed, not sure why it was changed in Rev. 2

It really the reason, I made the comment about the 37 pin connector.
 
deathshadow said:
and again why not just put the two to three DIN on the back instead of a breakout cable?
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Have you ever seen a PC card with a DIN connector on the bracket?
I think there's not enough room for that...

So give it a different IRQ and alter the drivers. That shouldn't be rocket science.
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For all the systems supporting PS/2 mice?
Perhaps not rocket science, but still, lots and lots of work.
Also, an XT with VGA, LAN, and sound, has no free IRQs, so what would be the preferred IRQ for PS/2 mouse? Probably 4, as with a PS/2 mouse, one hopefully no longer needs COM1.
BTW: IBM PS/2 Model 30 is essentially an XT with PS/2 mouse port - which IRQ it uses?
 
Xacalite said:
Have you ever seen a PC card with a DIN connector on the bracket?
I think there's not enough room for that...
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MiniDIN, yes. Bus mice cards. I believe that's where he was going with that suggestion. Though miniDIN to full DIN cables are harder to find than I first thought when I built the Tandy PLUS card with integrated HardMPU + XT-IDE.
 
deathshadow said:
Which nobody seems to sell even just bare boards for, and seems a bit too complicated for its own good... and again why not just put the two to three DIN on the back instead of a breakout cable?
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It's open source, you can print your own PCBs. As has already been stated, DIN connectors are too large for expansion slots. You can go MiniDIN, but you still need special adapters or cables. So you're not gaining anything over a breakout cable.

deathshadow said:
Last thing I need is another serial port, but good to know the project exists. Shame again, nobody seems to make the boards or provide kits.
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Again, it's open source...Monotech is also selling assembled ones on ebay.

deathshadow said:
Which does jack good in a 8 bit slot particularly when most 16 bit cards don't provide the ROM -- they rely on the AT class ROM to provide that functionality.
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Wrong. It will work just fine in an 8-bit slot, with the exception of the IDE port. You can put an HD floppy ROM on your motherboard, a NIC, or an XT-IDE. You can also boot DR-DOS for HD floppy support, or load the 2M-XBIOS device driver.

deathshadow said:
So give it a different IRQ and alter the drivers. That shouldn't be rocket science.
Click to expand...

Besides the IRQ problem, PS/2 ports are handled by the keyboard controller. So you're going to have a port conflict with the onboard controller.
 
glitch said:
I'd been asked by several people about doing a kit run of Sergey's FDC board, and had thought myself about doing it with the addition of at least a 34-pin edge connector added on, if not a 37-pin D-SUB. As long as the correct filters available on the board, it'll also do single-density mode, important for those of us with pre-PC machines. However, some time ago, Sergey had contacted me regarding the details of the XT-IDE rev 3 or rev 4 sales (I forget how long ago it was), stating that he was thinking about doing larger runs of some of his boards and offering kits, too. I haven't heard back from him about that, but I didn't want to start running a derivative of his FDC board if he was going to do so himself.

Anyone have current contact info for him?
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I am still around. And yes, I've been working on an 8-bit Multi I/O board. It got somewhat delayed because of other projects and life priorities. I'll drop you an e-mail in case you have some recommendations or ideas.
 
Xacalite said:
Have you ever seen a PC card with a DIN connector on the bracket?
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I had thought they fit since that's where Zenith/Heathkits put their keyboard connector, since they used a passive backplane in the design.

Or am I remembering that wrong?
 
deathshadow said:
I had thought they fit since that's where Zenith/Heathkits put their keyboard connector, since they used a passive backplane in the design.
Or am I remembering that wrong?
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Indeed, there were such SBCs.
But they probably required special cases.
 
On the Zenith, at least, the card has a wider-than-normal backplate for the DIN socket, with a corresponding notch in one of the slots on the rear panel.
 
Plasma said:
Besides the IRQ problem, PS/2 ports are handled by the keyboard controller. So you're going to have a port conflict with the onboard controller.
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PS/2 mice also need BIOS support, so the card would need a ROM extension. Sounds like it might be more user-friendly to have a microcontroller on the card and make the mouse appear to the host PC as a serial or bus mouse, for which the drivers already exist.
 
I'm wondering why would anybody want a PS/2 mouse port in an old PC.
Are PS/2 mice much easier to get than RS-232 mice?
Perhaps an USB mouse port would be more useful?
And yes, such a port should be visible to the host as a COM port, or some common bus mouse card.
 
Xacalite said:
I'm wondering why would anybody want a PS/2 mouse port in an old PC.
Are PS/2 mice much easier to get than RS-232 mice?
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Because they are super easy to get, even brand new. I have a box of them at work from computers we upgraded. Some are still new since we converted to wireless. Serial mice are not nearly as abundant and tend to cost more.
 
You can also increase the sample rate of PS/2 mice to 100hz+ to get a smoother cursor. Serial mice usually max out around 40hz. I like the concept of an add-on PS/2 port, I just don't think there's any way to get a "proper" PS/2 port that will work with existing drivers.
 
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