What's your coolest ISA card?( was Re: IBM 5150 PC)

From: r. 'bear' stricklin <red_at_bears.org>
Date: Tue Aug 7 10:21:33 2001

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Eric Chomko wrote:

>
> I have a 16 bit ISA card that is a Motorola 68020 with 68881 (or is it
> the 68882?). Anyway the card is a complete single board computer that
> plugs into your AT system. It is made by a company called DSI and came
> with C and FORTRAN, I believe.

I'd really like one of those Microway i860 multi-processor EISA cards I
used to see advertised all the time in the PC rags.

Probably the two most interesting ISA cards I own are an Iterated Systems
fractal compression accelerator, and a 3-board, 2-slot graphics card by
Matrox which I haven't identified yet.

Interesting to note that even beyond these two cards, that my most
interesting ISA or EISA boards are the least useful and the biggest
pains-in-the-bottom.

For example, I lusted in my heart for years after a SuperMac Spectrum/24
card. I finally got one in EISA flavour in 1996. Imagine my disappointment
that it 1) required a VGA card already installed in the system, 2) was
supported ONLY in Windows 3.1, and 3) was generally slower than the Compaq
QVision 1280/E I already had.

> I actually collect ISA cards that have interesting processors on them
> (i.e. 80186, 68000, 68020, 386 486, etc.)

The old WD7000 cards used Z80s. The NE3200 has an 80186 on, and the old
Mylex DCE376 caching SCSI card has an 80376sx (386sx for embedded
systems), but they're both EISA. DPT SCSI cards also have historically
used 680x0 CPUs---my PCI 2144UW has a 40 MHz 68040. I don't know if cards
like this fall within your mandate.

ok
r.
Received on Tue Aug 07 2001 - 10:21:33 BST