I wonder if it works with Thrustmaster ACM game card.

Gameport devices are among the simplest so if this thing works with anything it will work with joystick card. Many of those had just a single port and required polling. I suspect Thrustmaster cards actually used IRQ as well but that is still covered by USB2ISA feature list. Well, if you read that list, everything should work!

I had some experience, but I never fully installed the software for the device. I was using legacy ISA cards in a Windows XP system that did not support the cards. These were the famed LAPC-I and SCC-1 cards.

I have no need for such cards, having external devices to replace them. The setup was far too cumbersome and I never used the interface to access the midi interface.

However, I think I may have found a use for these devices after all. Someone on here posted an OPL Passthrough patch, which sends the data from DOSBox from the program to a real CMS or FM/OPL chip on an ISA Sound Blaster/Adlib or the like. A program called porttalk is required on Win XP systems to talk directly to the hardware, as these cards do not have drivers for them. It may work, but it would be an expensive failure.

id be very wary seeing that gameport to usb adapters are very hit and miss

That's the point, it is not gameport to USB adapter. It works on the lower level -- you still have exactly the same gameport adapter, it's just controlled through different bus. Latency may or may not be an issue.

I have a big pile of other sound and video cards. Occasionally I use some of them to compare functionality against emulation. Of course, I can use the legacy system I have but the USB adapter, if it works, would be much easier to handle. Besides, those are industrial-grade adapters. Some companies use them because they need that particular old hardware to work. Modified DOSBox capable of talking to any real ISA card would be quite useful to those shops.
It is hard to tell how the drivers for this adapter work. I suspect that "universal layer" is just a hack. It would require porttalk and, as a result, you will have every access to the hardware translated twice. Some of those accesses may not be favored by OS. I wonder if SDK allows finer and more direct control.

vasyl wrote:

Gameport devices are among the simplest so if this thing works with anything it will work with joystick card. Many of those had just a single port and required polling. I suspect Thrustmaster cards actually used IRQ as well but that is still covered by USB2ISA feature list. Well, if you read that list, everything should work!

Kewl! 😀

Now, if only it works in DOS.... No need to hunt for modern mobo with ISA slots anymore!

> In other words the speed of the ISA/PCMCIA card is not going to be the
> same as if the card is on the motherboard, or in the PCMCIA card reader.

I doubt the USB one millisecond delay will allow for proper joystick or soundblaster DSP usage.

One millisecond latency is USB1.1. USB2 requires latency of ~100microseconds, very close to IEEE1394. Of course, that's only in theory -- depending on driver quality it can be much worse. The latency value is given for host controller. Connecting any hubs add to it and most modern motherboards have multiple root hubs sometimes connected in rather complex configurations. USB2 bandwidth is actually significantly higher than ISA bandwidth (max bandwidth of 16-bit ISA is 15.9 MB/s, USB2 is almost four times of that).
In short, it's very hard to tell. Does anybody know what latencies are needed for normal operations of joysticks, soundcards, and videocards? What was the native latency of ISA bus?

A little update. I've contacted ArsTech and got some interesting information from them. They already have a customized version of DOSBox working with their hardware. It's not public yet but they are going to release it really soon. It should not require SDK, and they already have working Windows and Linux builds. They had some issues building OSX version though, and they can use some help in that area. They think that USB2ISA should work in most cases but with some cards there may be some timing issues -- there is a new line of adapters coming that use custom host controller (something called SSI2), it should be more suitable for timing sensitive hardware.
I am going to order one card and give it a try. A few days ago I've got a big bag of old hardware, practically intercepted it on its way to recyclers 😉 SCC-1, AWE64Gold, TB Tahiti with SSDB, and a few lesser cards joined my already decent collection. I think I can get that piece of hardware good testing.

If this device makes the Awe64 Gold functional in a Win 9x environment, that would completely eliminate the need for ISA in my case. Even better if it worked in pure DOS, but then again, DOS doesn't play well with USB in most cases.

Compelling stuff. My mobo manufacturer refuses to send me an I/O plate for my salvaged ISA board, and I don't particularly like having a giant hole for dust to get sucked into the back of the case. I'll have to keep an eye on this doodad. ;>

Keep us posted. I have a huge tower legacy machine that I more or less only keep because of the ISA port.

Aren't there PCI --> ISA converter plug thingies? I think I heard about that.
If not, that would be on many people's wish lists, so anyone who knows how might want to take a crack at that.
Four times the bandwidth sounds about right, that should overcome the overhead of the double-translation (or quadruple, going both ways).
One millisecond? It doesn't sound like much, but I think we know how audio is, 1 ms can turn a symphony into a car crash.
Even though they say it's all nice and general, they may have really not intended it for gaming or sound cards, or they be fully aware of issues with pedantic spec-obsessed cards and feel them not worth resolving.
I'm not sure at all, but I think depending on the hardware, you could be getting data as often as every 10 µs (microseconds).
I/O, memory space (I'm asuming they mean memory-mapped I/O), and IRQ? I'm not aware of any other ways of communicating with ISA, I don't think it had DMA, it should work, but... who knows?

Yeah I'd imagine it's meant for more industrial-style hardware. Custom interface boards and such.... Just like how lots of people think serial ports aren't used anymore (ha!), I'm sure there are very expensive ISA cards out there still in use.

hmmm this reminds me of, that a man some weeks ago, gave me a very stupid remark. About how PCI Express was the future and all that kind of stuff. When I saw today a brand spanking new PCI land card (a kickass LAN card I must say) , and there was no PCIE lan card in site. Some people are just stupid sometimes.

WolverineDK wrote:

hmmm this reminds me of, that a man some weeks ago, gave me a very stupid remark. About how PCI Express was the future and all that kind of stuff. When I saw today a brand spanking new PCI land card (a kickass LAN card I must say) , and there was no PCIE lan card in site. Some people are just stupid sometimes.

For graphics cards, it is the near past, the present and the future, shame that no other class of peripherals has taken the initiative to utilize the extra bandwidth afforded.

Not many other peripheral classes actually need all that bandwidth, especially in consumer market. There are a few higher-end RAID adapters that actually utilize x16 slot. I use PCI-E USB and FW400 adapters in my system but mostly to free up PCI ports. If you look around you can find PCI-E lan cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16833166019. Not even an expensive one.

vasyl wrote:

Not many other peripheral classes actually need all that bandwidth, especially in consumer market. There are a few higher-end RAID adapters that actually utilize x16 slot. I use PCI-E USB and FW400 adapters in my system but mostly to free up PCI ports. If you look around you can find PCI-E lan cards: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … N82E16833166019. Not even an expensive one.

Well, I saw a PCI lan card in Computercity yesterday, while I bought my new external dvd drive.
And it was a 1 gigabit lan card, just like the PCIE card. And it wasn´t expensive either.

vasyl wrote:

A little update. I've contacted ArsTech and got some interesting information from them. They already have a customized version of DOSBox working with their hardware. It's not public yet but they are going to release it really soon. It should not require SDK, and they already have working Windows and Linux builds. They had some issues building OSX version though, and they can use some help in that area. They think that USB2ISA should work in most cases but with some cards there may be some timing issues -- there is a new line of adapters coming that use custom host controller (something called SSI2), it should be more suitable for timing sensitive hardware.
I am going to order one card and give it a try.

Has anyone actually tried the latest Ars usb3isa product with an LAPC and dosbox?

I'd like to know the same thing! It's been 2 years since the last post. Very keen to hear some updates.