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

From: Rob Lion <rnlion_at_its.caltech.edu>
Date: Tue Aug 7 19:17:11 2001

Speaking of almost-blank ISA cards, I have a really neat one here (in the
Mountaingate RDR I was asking about a few weeks back). The ISA bus
connections are limited only to power and ground lines, I think, though I
couldn't actually get it to work outside the backplane it came in. It has
a 40 pin IDE header on the other edge of the card, which plugs into an IDE
controller. Then it takes those signals and the power from the bus and
runs it all into a laptop-style 44 pin header, so you can mount a 2.5"
drive right there on the card with its provided screwholes. I think it
would be even cooler to combine a card like that with a really simple IDE
controller, and have the whole setup and drive on one card there.

-Rob

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Fred Cisin (XenoSoft) wrote:

> On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Gene Buckle wrote:
> > > > how about SILLIEST?? IBM professional debug facility. An entire half
> > > > length card for the sole purpose of bringing two pins of the ISA bus to a
> > > > pushbutton. It made the front cover of PC Tech Journal.
> > That sounds a LOT like the Periscope debugger board. Is it?
>
> NO!
>
> Periscope (by Brett Salter) had several different versions, ranging from
> little clips to go into an ISA slot alongside a board, to a full lenghth
> board with "write-protectable RAM" that the debugger could be loaded into.
>
> The IBM version COULD be used with the Persicope software, particularly if
> you were SO unable to solder as to not be able to put a pair of extra
> wires ont solder pads (such as on the floppy card).
>
> What made the IBM card "SPECIAL" was that it was an entire half length
> card with a single trace on each side running at an angle to the
> pushbutton. It was the closest to a BLANK card as was ever issued. REAL
> BLANK, without even any holes in it, NOT a prototype card.
>
> --
> Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin_at_xenosoft.com
>
>
Received on Tue Aug 07 2001 - 19:17:11 BST