ISA-PCI Conversion possible? (About MS's PC 98 Specs)

From: Hotze <photze_at_batelco.com.bh>
Date: Sat Apr 4 06:11:40 1998

>I definitely won't say it's impossible -- at my age I've given up
>making judgements like that on technical matters. I will say that
>it's a non-trivial problem and likely to produce underwhelming
>performance compared to native PCI boards. My own preference is
Yeah, but very few PCI boards are actually running at the full PCI specs.
I've even seen some PCI versions of ISA boards that work at exactly the same
speed as their ISA counterpart.
>to keep at least one machine (like I would ever cut it down to
>that!) to which the old equipment is native and network it to the
>newer equipment as I acquire it. Then again, I don't pay a lot of
>attention to MS's hardware specs, since the only times I run their
>software is to play games or to figure out how to get something
>running in DOSEMU or WABI under Linux -- most of my emulators of
Well, as unimportant as they may seem to you, their hardware specs will
influence your x86 Linux machines, unless a vendor's smart enough to make
ISA/PCI/AGP boards.
>old 8-bit equipment (Tandy, Apple, Atari, etc.) work just fine
>that way, and I really _don't need_ the bells and whistles in the
>latest Microsoft Office(tm) suite except when an employer insists
>upon it at work, and eight times out of ten I manage to get
>around it there as well.
You're right, but still, like I said, you may be ISA-less. It's time that
we killed the bus, I agree, but allowing a smooth migration would help alot.
For instance, my AWE 64's been on my machine for under a week. Now, if I
were to get an all-PCI system, I'd loose my *new* soundcard. ISA's
outdated, my SB isn't.
    Ciao,

Tim D. Hotze
Received on Sat Apr 04 1998 - 06:11:40 BST