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Slot type on 386sx?

Well, availability or lack thereof of XP drivers for your cards is what's going to determine the practicality of your scheme--assuming that you want to retain your cards. And Artsoft is best suited to answer that one. XP programs do not talk to peripherals the same way that DOS or even Windows 9x programs do. Direct access to hardware I/O ports is blocked by the system; that's why you need drivers for devices when using XP.

Sadly, there's a lot of older hardware out there that has been left by the wayside with no XP/2000/NT support at all.

So do some checking.
 
I am running Mach3 at the moment on another unit, not through the parallel port but using a motion card that supplies +-10volts analog and the motion cards in my machine are putting out +-10v analog but from 1992.
Well, that's a problem; those 1992 volts are going to be worth less than 2010 volts ;-)
(sorry)

@Chuck: this is a PII ATX board, but I suppose the same thing holds true; who knows what other MBs or expansion cards might have been put into one of these. Are these Slot 1 PII CPUs worth keeping? They do make pretty letter holders...
 
Mike, most any Slot 1 PII board can be used for PIII. Just pay attention to the FSB frequency and select the CPU accordingly, making sure that the board can supply the correct Vcore for the CPU you select. My favorite Slot 1 board has 3 ISA slots, AGP and 3 PCI slots. Right now, it's running a 1GHz Coppermine PIII with Win98SE, Win2K and Xubuntu on the hard drive. The ISA slots are loaded up with 1/2" tape, floppy (secondary), and HPIB controllers; it's got a Catweasel in one of the PCI slots and a wireless card in another. With a 32MB AGP card, it's a very useful system for data migration. I tend to hang onto systems with ISA slots---they're not coming back anytime soon and there are a lot of old peripherals in ISA that don't exist in PCI.

The whole affair is mounted in a 6' rack with a tape drive on the bottom to keep it on the ground. I can roll it to the area where it's needed. I should probably post a photo of it.
 
Depending on your needs, you can do what I want to do - upgrade to a modern ISA board, and dualboot DOS and a modern OS - the best of both worlds. When you need to use your ISA cards, boot to DOS and do so, and then if you need to xfer files to the box or do something else with it, boot to Windows or Linux or whatever and do so, with the capacity to access the DOS HDD and retrieve files as necessary.

I'm going to be doing this for a gaming/programming setup, however, so I'm not sure if it will work for you.
 
As I said before, I stand a better chance landing a rocket on the moon. I will just look for a few old 386's to keep for spares.
Thanks.
 
Well if needed I have a socket 478 P4 motherboard which has 2 ISA slots. I got it for $29.00 at a local recycle center. Has been tested and works fine. Will take up 2GB of dual channel DDR RAM. Uses the Intel Springfield 865G chipset. Has AGP, 4 or 5 PCI slots and of course will run Win 2K,XP etc.
If interested PM me.
 
Well if needed I have a socket 478 P4 motherboard which has 2 ISA slots. I got it for $29.00 at a local recycle center. Has been tested and works fine. Will take up 2GB of dual channel DDR RAM. Uses the Intel Springfield 865G chipset. Has AGP, 4 or 5 PCI slots and of course will run Win 2K,XP etc.
If interested PM me.

The OP has need for three (see the photo and the description) ISA controller cards. One of the SOYO motherboards can barely meet that need.
 
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