try finding the manual
amybe msd (microsoft diagnostics), norton system doctor (i think )
or look in the bios see what things you can reserve

this is the problem, i dont have manuals to this cards, only see jumpers with no desc on the board

retropol wrote:

this is the problem, i dont have manuals to this cards, only see jumpers with no desc on the board

What a card?

retropol wrote:

is there any tool on dos which helps finding addr, irq, dma conflicts with hw plugged?

There is some such software, see eg. Checkit - it does detect such things, but only for the most basic hardware.
For other cards, there may be some setup/diagnostics software provided with given card.
But there's nothing universal.

or a tool which detects addr, irq, dma for given card in given slot?

With ISA, it's not even possible - all the slots share the same signals, there's no "geographical addressing" like in PCI and other modern buses.

Tbh, I find PnP ISA cards much harder to deal with. With non-PnP it's quite simple, a card is set for certain resources and that's it. It's up to you to keep track of what uses what.

That's actually a big advantage if you don't know what a card is set at. Exactly what your options are depend on the type of card, but basically there are two routes:
1) try to guess working settings (based on common defaults for that type of card).
2) use a second, known-good with known settings and use that to check when *it* has a conflict, indicating that the other card is probably using that resource.

But agree with others above: what kind of card are we talking about here? Do you have a good photograph we could use to think along with you?

i am trying to make the hand scanner alive as of now ...

drivers for hand-scanner FCC ID: EMJSE401A

... but also will have the same fight to make my soundcard working as expected.

What's the problem exactly? Except cheap multi-i/o controller cards from back then, 99% of all non-pnp cards have jumpers that tell you what they are for. Show me e.g. a soundcard with jumpers for base address, irq, and dma that has no silk-screening explaining the jumpers.

>> 99% of all non-pnp cards have jumpers that tell you what they are for.
so I have the 1% case.

Show me the card.

hi the link is 2 posts earlier

Really? All three jumpers have a description next to them. The problem you have with not getting that thing to work is that you don't have the correct software / drivers for it. You can't just use drivers from some other hand scanner and expect it to work.

ok, so tell me what are the settings, if you are saying the description is next to them. what is now the addr, what irq, what dma