Custom ISA Cards \ VOGONS

Custom ISA Cards

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First post, by Hamby

Posted on 2023-01-02, 15:57

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I have no idea what I would do with these, but they make me drool.

I would love to have a retro PC that boots and runs DOS 6.22 (or FreeDOS) from rom (other than my Tandy 1000hx).
https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-isa-rom-pcb/

I would also love to connect to a Pi ZeroW via ISA (or better... via Zorro)
https://www.recantha.co.uk/blog/?p=18807
(Though, instead of a floppy emulator, I'd prefer to access the networking capabilities of the PI)

And I would also love to access the Pi Zero W's GPIO from DOS, via ISA card. Maybe use it as some sort of custom processor.
https://texelec.com/product/8-bit-isa-prototy … -card-v1-0-pcb/
A 16-bit ISA card might even be able to use an FPGA or a Raspberry PI (or both) as a Voodoo clone. 3D acceleration of any kind in an ISA PC would be cool in my book.
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/emulate-any-i … pi-and-an-fpga/

Reply 1 of 7, by Shponglefan

Posted on 2023-01-02, 16:11

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Hamby wrote on 2023-01-02, 15:57:

I would love to have a retro PC that boots and runs DOS 6.22 (or FreeDOS) from rom (other than my Tandy 1000hx).
https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-isa-rom-pcb/

Use these in my 286 builds and they work nicely for loading XT-IDE and running CF cards from ISA I/O controller cards.

But yeah, it would be neat if there was a version with flash ROM for DOS directly on the card.

Last edited by Shponglefan on 2023-01-02, 17:45. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 2 of 7, by Gmlb256

Posted on 2023-01-02, 16:20

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Hamby wrote on 2023-01-02, 15:57:

A 16-bit ISA card might even be able to use an FPGA or a Raspberry PI (or both) as a Voodoo clone. 3D acceleration of any kind in an ISA PC would be cool in my book.
https://hackaday.com/2022/11/13/emulate-any-i … pi-and-an-fpga/

A Voodoo clone as a 16-bit ISA card would be impossible in practice. Neither ISA nor VL bus are compatible with the PCI protocols used by Voodoo cards.

Close thing that there is in 3D hardware acceleration on pre-PCI computers are the Creative 3D Blaster VLB and the S3 ViRGE (the original 325 one) which has documented VLB support.

Reply 3 of 7, by pentiumspeed

Posted on 2023-01-02, 17:00

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Flash that large in 32 pin package is 512K x 8 bits. Such as winbond W29C040 as low as 70ns and is programmable at 5V.
Could make about 5MB using 10 of this. So you can account for few 1.44MB images in it.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 4 of 7, by rasz_pl

Posted on 2023-01-02, 23:38

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this is what you want: Re: Is there a EMS board Project?

https://github.com/raszpl/FIC-486-GAC-2-Cache-Module for AT&T Globalyst
https://github.com/raszpl/386RC-16 memory board
https://github.com/raszpl/440BX Reference Design adapted to Kicad
https://github.com/raszpl/Zenith_ZBIOS MFM-300 Monitor

Reply 5 of 7, by douglar

Posted on 2023-01-03, 01:48

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Has anyone used this?

https://www.tuxera.com/products/rom-dos/

Reply 6 of 7, by Jo22

Posted on 2023-01-03, 03:04

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Hamby wrote on 2023-01-02, 15:57:

I would love to have a retro PC that boots and runs DOS 6.22 (or FreeDOS) from rom (other than my Tandy 1000hx).

Hi there! 🙂
It's not exactly the same, but the earliest forms of Flash chips used an EPROM form factor.

Have a look for Disc-On-Chip 2000. DOCs can be interfaced quite easily with ISA.
There's a built-in boot loader and virtual file system driver.

Embedded DOS systems from the 90s used these chips, most notably those built into TV set-top boxes for the living room.

These flash chips are essentially the forerunners of today's SSD technology.

The only downside (technically) is that the i/o is "limited" to int13h - there's no IDE/SCSI technology involved, after all.
Ok, and the little bit of extra memory consumption in UMA, maybe. 😉

Sample picture:
Re: Flash storage for 286 computers? Preferred approach?

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