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Prashun Patel
07-19-2011, 11:40 AM
Stab in the dark alert:

I have some old hardware that runs some equipment in my lab. This hardware has an ISA bus interface. Because ISA was replaced with a newer bus system sometime in the Jurassic period, I have been reluctant to replace the PC (going on 15 years now); doing so would require a huge investment in a conversion kit for the attached hardware.

We now are forced to replace the PC because of size limitations on the HD. I'd love to find a new PC that has an ISA bus.

Any leads appreciated.

Chuck Wintle
07-19-2011, 12:09 PM
the ISA bus is no more except on some specialized industrial computers...such as the one my company bought last year for a specialized piece of equipment that used ISA cards for the interface. It was over $5000US for this machine.

Prashun Patel
07-19-2011, 12:59 PM
This has been my experience too. Darn! But thanks.

paul cottingham
07-19-2011, 2:57 PM
Put a HDD controller in the current computer that supports larger HDD sizes. We used to do it all the time, works great.

David Hostetler
07-19-2011, 3:44 PM
Is it a proprietary interface card that is the issue? If so, does the main board of the computer also have a free PCI slot? You could install a EIDE controller there. I highly doubt any old computer running an ISA bus will be able to run an OS that could handle SATA drivers.

Mike Cutler
07-19-2011, 3:53 PM
NIXSYS and iEi.

Contrary to popular belief, there still remains quite a bit of ISA archtecture hardware still in use. Just not in the office/home environment.

John Coloccia
07-19-2011, 6:19 PM
Well...I believe that ISA and PC104 are electrically compatible but gave different form factors. Contact WinSystems and see if they have a solution for you. You'll probably have to settle for an SBC but I've dealt with them in the past and have found them to be quite helpful for things like this.

Paul Cohen
07-20-2011, 3:52 AM
Intel made a few "white box" PC's for telecom companies with ISA bus as late as 3 years ago, have not looked into it since 2008 so I don't know if they still do. I would contact one of their industrial distribuators and see if they have any leads. The only one I know is located on Long Island called ION Computer Systems http://www.ioncomputer.com/ but there are 100's throughout the world.

John Coloccia
07-20-2011, 4:33 AM
I just went out and looked at the industrial computers. Wow...everything's dropped in price!

Karl Card
07-23-2011, 3:53 AM
That is a bad deal all the way around but I can say that I know the feeling. I used to have sound card that was isa and wow it sounded so good, much better than even the soundblasters of today. As far as a larger HD, wouldnt that depend on how big of a HD you want and also will the operating system see it and also doesnt the bios come into play as far as being able to handle the size of the HD? Been a few years since I messed with older versions of windows and could not remember if it was bios limitations or OS limitations or both.

Prashun Patel
07-23-2011, 7:41 AM
Karl-
That is a very good point. I hadn't even thought of that.

Lemme check.

Jason Roehl
07-23-2011, 8:03 AM
You can always partition a newer, larger HD. The downside is that today's HDs are so large, you end up with a bunch of 2 GB partitions. I once had a Win95 computer, put a 17.6 GB HD in it (original was 1 GB--how would I EVER fill THAT up?), so I ended up with 8-9 partitions of ~2 GB each. That computer had both ISA and PCI (cutting edge!) expansion slots.

Karl Card
07-23-2011, 11:11 AM
You can always partition a newer, larger HD. The downside is that today's HDs are so large, you end up with a bunch of 2 GB partitions. I once had a Win95 computer, put a 17.6 GB HD in it (original was 1 GB--how would I EVER fill THAT up?), so I ended up with 8-9 partitions of ~2 GB each. That computer had both ISA and PCI (cutting edge!) expansion slots.


the computer age has definitely grown exponentially... I also remember when I bought my first cd recorder 300 bux... I then remember going from 4 to 8 megs of ram and now 8 gigs on up... it is fun though.. worse than keeping up with the jones..

I do remember going from a 850 meg hd to a 6.4gig and thinking I was cool, now 1 tb is ok but not enough...

paul cottingham
07-23-2011, 11:57 AM
That is a bad deal all the way around but I can say that I know the feeling. I used to have sound card that was isa and wow it sounded so good, much better than even the soundblasters of today. As far as a larger HD, wouldnt that depend on how big of a HD you want and also will the operating system see it and also doesnt the bios come into play as far as being able to handle the size of the HD? Been a few years since I messed with older versions of windows and could not remember if it was bios limitations or OS limitations or both.
The bios of all older computers was limited asto HDD size. Thats why I suggested an HDD controller. The bios on the card will circumvent that problem, Now....finding a card will create a separate set of problems....Does the machine have a pci bus? If it does, what version? What voltage?

Greg Portland
07-25-2011, 7:39 PM
A quick internet search yielded a USB--ISA converter: http://www.arstech.com/item--usb2isar.html

I have not used this product but I have used other ARS tech items and have been pleased with the results.