On the back of the card it says Model:ISAPC-00.

I've seen those on eBay. They are cheap, maybe $15. From a quick search, I didn't find out much info on them though. Are they NIC-specific? Can they be used with PCMCIA USB cards, serial port cards, SCSI cards, SATA, etc?

Have you tested it in Windows 9X, NT, or 2000? What drivers did you use? I'd be very interested to know if a USB or PCMCIA-to-CF adapter worked hassle free.

feipoa wrote:

Sliderider, you have indirectly raised an important question -- Are there PCMCIA PS/2 port mouse cards? Perhaps you could get a PCMCIA USB card, then a USB-to-PS/2 adapter, but that probably won't work in NT4.0, so what about a PCMCIA PS/2 port card?

Have you tested your ISA PCMCIA card? What have you tested it with (What OS, cards, and drivers)? What model ISA PCMCIA card do you have?

I wonder how well USB would work over ISA? Hmmm, there are some USB mouse hacks for NT4 I've briefly read about, I wonder if this will work. Sounds like an interesting project, but my project TO-DO list is becoming out of control!

The big question is would you want USB over ISA? Does the ISA bus have enough bandwith for it without causing massive slowdowns? You probably wouldn't be able to run a USB hard drive from it at anything approaching a reasonable transfer rate.

feipoa wrote:

On the back of the card it says Model:ISAPC-00.

I've seen those on eBay. They are cheap, maybe $15. From a quick search, I didn't find out much info on them though. Are they NIC-specific? Can they be used with PCMCIA USB cards, serial port cards, SCSI cards, SATA, etc?

Have you tested it in Windows 9X, NT, or 2000? What drivers did you use? I'd be very interested to know if a USB or PCMCIA-to-CF adapter worked hassle free.

I haven't tested anything with it yet but the online manual I found for it says that it will work with other devices but support will not be provided for anything other than an Orinoco card. It looks like the cards only support two I/O addresses so you wouldn't be able to have more than two of them installed without creating conflicts.

Well, it would only be for a USB mouse; fast speed not required.

Would you mind uploading or linking the manual/drivers? Is it the user's guide for a PC-250/260/300?

feipoa wrote:

Well, it would only be for a USB mouse; fast speed not required.

Would you mind uploading or linking the manual/drivers? Is it the user's guide for a PC-250/260/300?

ftp://ftp.lucky.net/pub/radio/doc/ORINOCO/GSG_ISA.pdf

I just ordered a PCMCIA USB card from ebay so i guess we'll find out if it works when it gets here.

feipoa wrote:

I think the main purpose of the card is to allow connection to 100Mbit-only hubs.

Thats basically it's biggest advantage. You can hook it up to your switch/router and not have it set your entire network to 10mbps.

Well, they are certainly cheap enough -- Buy It Now $4.

You'd probably have the greatist probability of success with a USB 1.1 PCMCIA card, but those may be hard to find these days.

feipoa wrote:

I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, whic […]
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I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, which is pretty annoying.

It is a pretty slow network card. I did some speed tests once; it was about 5% faster than a 10 mBit 3Com EtherlinkIII. I tried to up the ISA bus with the BIOS dividers, but the speed didn't seem to increase.

I think the main purpose of the card is to allow connection to 100Mbit-only hubs.

What do you got? Are you donating?

The only ISA stuff I've got is audio stuff and that strange duck adapter for PCMCIA that I've not tested yet 🙁.

But this is interesting. The ultra hard to find ISA 3 com 10/100 cards suck in ISA format. It's baffling though as 16 bit ISA should yield around 150 Mb/sec (bits not bytes 😜) at ~8mhz.

I wonder if a Realtek card would fare better? They're the only other chipset vendor I can think of that made 100mbit ISA stuff.

From the sound of it, 3Com may have just re used a 10mbit chipset for their 100mbit ISA product, or they didn't put a lot of effort into creating it.

SavantStrike wrote:

The only ISA stuff I've got is audio stuff and that strange duck adapter for PCMCIA that I've not tested yet :(. […]
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feipoa wrote:

I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, whic […]
Show full quote

I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, which is pretty annoying.

It is a pretty slow network card. I did some speed tests once; it was about 5% faster than a 10 mBit 3Com EtherlinkIII. I tried to up the ISA bus with the BIOS dividers, but the speed didn't seem to increase.

I think the main purpose of the card is to allow connection to 100Mbit-only hubs.

What do you got? Are you donating?

The only ISA stuff I've got is audio stuff and that strange duck adapter for PCMCIA that I've not tested yet 🙁.

But this is interesting. The ultra hard to find ISA 3 com 10/100 cards suck in ISA format. It's baffling though as 16 bit ISA should yield around 150 Mb/sec (bits not bytes 😜) at ~8mhz.

I wonder if a Realtek card would fare better? They're the only other chipset vendor I can think of that made 100mbit ISA stuff.

From the sound of it, 3Com may have just re used a 10mbit chipset for their 100mbit ISA product, or they didn't put a lot of effort into creating it.

I wonder if you put a gigabit ethernet card in the PCMCIA adapter if you would be able to access the full bandwith available to the 16-bit ISA bus. It won't come anywhere close to real gigabit ethernet, but would still have to be a noticeable improvement over 10/100 and if you're overclocking the ISA bus, the improvement might be even greater.

sliderider wrote:

SavantStrike wrote:

The only ISA stuff I've got is audio stuff and that strange duck adapter for PCMCIA that I've not tested yet :(. […]
Show full quote

feipoa wrote:

I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, whic […]
Show full quote

I have only one 100 Mbit ISA ethernet by 3Com. From memory, I think its a 3c515 and only does 100 Mbit in non-duplex mode, which is pretty annoying.

It is a pretty slow network card. I did some speed tests once; it was about 5% faster than a 10 mBit 3Com EtherlinkIII. I tried to up the ISA bus with the BIOS dividers, but the speed didn't seem to increase.

I think the main purpose of the card is to allow connection to 100Mbit-only hubs.

What do you got? Are you donating?

The only ISA stuff I've got is audio stuff and that strange duck adapter for PCMCIA that I've not tested yet 🙁.

But this is interesting. The ultra hard to find ISA 3 com 10/100 cards suck in ISA format. It's baffling though as 16 bit ISA should yield around 150 Mb/sec (bits not bytes 😜) at ~8mhz.

I wonder if a Realtek card would fare better? They're the only other chipset vendor I can think of that made 100mbit ISA stuff.

From the sound of it, 3Com may have just re used a 10mbit chipset for their 100mbit ISA product, or they didn't put a lot of effort into creating it.

I wonder if you put a gigabit ethernet card in the PCMCIA adapter if you would be able to access the full bandwith available to the 16-bit ISA bus. It won't come anywhere close to real gigabit ethernet, but would still have to be a noticeable improvement over 10/100 and if you're overclocking the ISA bus, the improvement might be even greater.

It's an interesting idea in theory, but you might actually get slower performance than a good 100 megabit card in actual practice.

Most of the gigabit PCMCIA cards were built with cheaper gigabit chipsets. My dad has one that absolutely blows chunks compared to the integrated Intel 100 megabit card it was supposed to supplant. It works for about 10 minutes, and then it crawls to a standstill.

Now a good gigabit PCMCIA card however, that might be interesting. You should be able to get the aforementioned 150 megabits per second if there aren't any losses, and maybe 170-200 if you OC the ISA bus like you said. The trouble is finding one with a good chipset. Manufacturers didn't put a ton of effort into it as the PCMCIA bus can't really handle Gigabit that well.

Woohoo! The nexgen motherboard is here!

Well, now I have the PCMCIA USB adapter and guess what? It's 3.3V and the carrier card I got is 5V, so no joy. Maybe. It seems the controller chip on the card can autodetect 3.3v or 5v and has overvolt protection so the only problem is that the PCMCIA slot on the card is keyed for 5V and won't accept a 3.3V card. The whole carrier assembly is screwed to the circuit board and looks like it's removable. I wonder if I get a cheap PCI model PCMCIA adapter with a 3.3V slot whether it can be swapped to the ISA board so i can get this USB port working? What does everyone think of that idea?

There are two completely different standards for the PC Card interface. There's the original PCMCIA, based off the ISA bus, and then there's Cardbus, based off the PCI bus. Cardbus slots are backwards compatible to 16-bit PCMCIA cards, but modern Cardbus cards will not work in 16-bit PCMCIA slots.

All PC Card USB adapters, and 99% of 10/100 NICs are Cardbus. There is no way to use them through an ISA->PCMCIA adapter. It can't be done.

I was afraid of that, so there's no way to get USB onto an ISA bus PC at all?

Holy awesomeness, Batman! 😳 That is very cool.

So the board itself is functioning?
Care to show us any pics? 😁