The problem would not be getting the PCB manufactured. A lot of companies offer this service at pretty decent prices. Problem is probably interfacing the ISA bus to USB ..

H3nrik V! wrote on 2021-01-27, 07:49:

The problem would not be getting the PCB manufactured. A lot of companies offer this service at pretty decent prices. Problem is probably interfacing the ISA bus to USB ..

Is there a bridge chip that could help?

depends on what you want to use the usb for, drivers would probably be an issue, but a simple HID converter for mice wouldn't be too hard... might as well just get a usb to serial adapter for that though as the card would probably just do the same.

for file transfer there are certainly easier options.

imi wrote on 2021-01-27, 09:35:

depends on what you want to use the usb for, drivers would probably be an issue, but a simple HID converter for mice wouldn't be too hard... might as well just get a usb to serial adapter for that though as the card would probably just do the same.

for file transfer there are certainly easier options.

for usb stuff. hook up the mouse, usb stick, external hard drive, wifi dongle, card reader, charge phone, backup phone, whatever you wanted that usb usually does

yeah serial adapter would work for mice. I'm mainly thinking of later systems, p1 to p4 that have limited pci slots being used for other things having more options on isa would free up spaces

Problem lies in the software side. Someone must write the driver to use the thing and nobody is going to do that, even if they're capable. One day I will learn what it takes to make a Win9x driver but that is many years away and some of the more harder things to do.

Tiido wrote on 2021-01-27, 11:16:

Problem lies in the software side. Someone must write the driver to use the thing and nobody is going to do that, even if they're capable. One day I will learn what it takes to make a Win9x driver but that is many years away and some of the more harder things to do.

There already was a USB ISA card on the market for like 25 years, never seen one in the wild though only on the website

Now to find the link to the thing

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-01-27, 12:34:

Tiido wrote on 2021-01-27, 11:16:

Problem lies in the software side. Someone must write the driver to use the thing and nobody is going to do that, even if they're capable. One day I will learn what it takes to make a Win9x driver but that is many years away and some of the more harder things to do.

There already was a USB ISA card on the market for like 25 years, never seen one in the wild though only on the website

Now to find the link to the thing

heck, if we knew the name maybe we could find some on ebay?

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-01-27, 12:34:

Tiido wrote on 2021-01-27, 11:16:

Problem lies in the software side. Someone must write the driver to use the thing and nobody is going to do that, even if they're capable. One day I will learn what it takes to make a Win9x driver but that is many years away and some of the more harder things to do.

There already was a USB ISA card on the market for like 25 years, never seen one in the wild though only on the website

Now to find the link to the thing

the one from the other thread?

how I understood it that was specifically just for one purpose as well and required a driver accordingly.

a usb card that does... well everything USB would require drivers for everything, it's just that in windows nowadays universal drivers are included for most kinds of USB devices.

it's not like you can just install DOS on a machine with USB and expect every device to just work (I assume DOS is the primary purpose if you want it on an ISA card)

http://www.simtec.co.uk/products/components.html

https://www.google.com/search?q=simtec+isa+us … chrome&ie=UTF-8

found this but no place to buy one

imi wrote on 2021-01-27, 12:55:

the one from the other thread? […]
Show full quote

rmay635703 wrote on 2021-01-27, 12:34:

Tiido wrote on 2021-01-27, 11:16:

Problem lies in the software side. Someone must write the driver to use the thing and nobody is going to do that, even if they're capable. One day I will learn what it takes to make a Win9x driver but that is many years away and some of the more harder things to do.

There already was a USB ISA card on the market for like 25 years, never seen one in the wild though only on the website

Now to find the link to the thing

the one from the other thread?

how I understood it that was specifically just for one purpose as well and required a driver accordingly.

a usb card that does... well everything USB would require drivers for everything, it's just that in windows nowadays universal drivers are included for most kinds of USB devices.

it's not like you can just install DOS on a machine with USB and expect every device to just work (I assume DOS is the primary purpose if you want it on an ISA card)

I have limited pci slots, using isa for something would help free up pci slots for things that need pci like video cards storage controllers etc

unless you really want to go through the effort of getting usb to work on ISA for the sake of it, expanding your PCI would be a lot less hassle ^^

imi wrote on 2021-01-27, 13:16:

unless you really want to go through the effort of getting usb to work on ISA for the sake of it, expanding your PCI would be a lot less hassle ^^

it's a pentium 1 motherboard with 5 slots which is more slots than usually came with those motherboards. this exact board has been the focal point of the build so a different board isn't something I want to do. I bought a pci splitter and it seems to work but the wires are short and I cant find a good place or way to mount it. finding things to put on ISA seems like a good solution. also putting things on usb works well these days but not back in the days of this motherboard many modern usb things don't have win 9x/me support but 98se and me did support usb so if I can move the usb to isa the network card that is on usb now that 98 won't support can be a pci one that it will instead of having to go to xp or 7 to do whatever then back or not being able to do network games you get what I mean i have unused isa slots and want to move stuff from pci to isa and a usb isa card would make sense

external PCI expansion? ^^

imi wrote on 2021-01-27, 13:38:

external PCI expansion? ^^

maybe? does it hook up to a pci slot? only ones I see hook to a pci express slot or are some weird crazy server thing. small box with four slots would be great.

yes there are some with PCI too, they tend to be pricey though.

you can get microcontrollers that have usb otg functionality in their stacks. there are so many class compliant things youd need to either be 'this is for gamepads only' or 'this is for usb storage only' or something, and the driver side on dos could be simple or a nightmare but usb is VERY cpu heavy. its constant polling. you could maybe use the otg uC chips and do some IRQ triggering but usb is designed for way faster than dos ISA bus speed.

I remember wanting to buy one of these these back in the late 90's, but passed because it was more cost effective to get USB ports by upgrading to a socket 7 motherboard than it was to buy the card.

http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet/phi … ISP1161A-01.pdf

Looks like they had a FIFO buffer and DMA to reduce CPU load.

If the card was out there, then the drivers probably were probably out there, somewhere, just like all those missing MR BIOS upgrades. The problem is finding them.

if speed isn't a problem (since you want this for ISA) why not using a USB hub to multiply the USB ports ?

Sphere478 wrote on 2021-01-27, 11:09:

for usb stuff. hook up the mouse, usb stick, external hard drive, wifi dongle, card reader, charge phone, backup phone, whatever you wanted that usb usually does

If you just want a charger, it looks like there are molex-to-USB adapters. If you want wifi, it looks like there are wifi-to-Ethernet adapters. And there are the aforementioned USB-to-serial adatpers for mice.

I can't imagine why you would want to backup a phone to a computer with ISA slots, even if you had appropriate drivers.