Modern motherboards don’t come with ISA slots, and almost everybody is fine with that. If you really want one, though, there are ways to get one. [TheRasteri] explains how in a forum post on the topic.
Believe it or not, some post-2010 PC hardware can still do ISA, it’s just that the slots aren’t broken out or populated on consumer hardware. However, if you know where to look, you can hack in an ISA hookup to get your old hardware going. [TheRasteri] achieves this on motherboards that have the LPC bus accessible, with the use of a custom PCB featuring the Fintek F85226 LPC-to-ISA bridge. This allows installing old ISA cards into a much more modern PC, with [TheRasteri] noting that DMA is fully functional with this setup—important for some applications. Testing thus far has involved a Socket 755 motherboard and a Socket 1155 motherboard, and [TheRasteri] believes this technique could work on newer hardware too as long as legacy BIOS or CSM is available.
It’s edge case stuff, as few of us are trying to run Hercules graphics cards on Windows 11 machines or anything like that. But if you’re a legacy hardware nut, and you want to see what can be done, you might like to check out [TheRasteri’s] work over on Github. Video after the break.
Really quite a nice hack but already covered? https://hackaday.com/2023/03/23/isa-over-tpm-to-your-pc/
Yes I knew I’d seen it before as I follow him on YouTube,
What’s more interesting are the 52 pages of comments on other folks attempts getting it working. Its been rumbling on a bit.
I knew i had seen the video before and probably from a HaD article.
I do note, the original article links to a no longer existing video. I remember one of his videos being about what he attempted to do but failed partially. and this later video probably was a more logical final video
In Estonian “isa” means father so…
YMMV
I has some PCI-X to PCI bridges running with the PI7C9X111SL for supporting some legacy cards.
Variable outcomes.
Often it would be fine under linux but not windows – same machine.
Other times it would be the opposite. Which was interesting but not helpful :)
Mostly, two cards of the same type in the twin slot bridges would see one or the other never both.
Lot of stuff out there about tweaking BIOS settings which assumes it isn’t locked down (haha these days).
Ultimately if it’s mission critical you’ll find a way even it’s it’s not the way you wanted (stockpiling boards with PCI slots)
Could be interesting for folks with ADC sampling cards (think lab hardware, not audio stuff – audio is simple and slow). Data acquisition in the 100s of megasamples per second is bloody expensive (if you want the quality and several channels simultanously, not multiplexed, and longish time series).