{"id":9091,"date":"2023-07-04T17:04:44","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T00:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9091"},"modified":"2024-07-04T18:43:47","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T01:43:47","slug":"isa-buses-on-a-modern-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9091","title":{"rendered":"ISA buses on a modern PC?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Welcome to dISAppointment! Well, it has been disappointment for anyone wanting to use old retro sound cards or <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3793\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=3793\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">attach 5.25&#8243; floppy drives<\/a> or MFM\/RLL hard drives in modern computers. They all relied on ISA controllers, which have not been supported for over a decade now. But is that about to change?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hackaday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/03\/FrmWqlWWYAEXVlh.jpg?w=640&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>I recently <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2023\/03\/23\/isa-over-tpm-to-your-pc\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/2023\/03\/23\/isa-over-tpm-to-your-pc\/\" target=\"_blank\">read about this really clever hacker&#8217;s adapter<\/a>. &nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@TheRasteri\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@TheRasteri\" target=\"_blank\">TheRasteri<\/a> found he could still access the ISA bus lurking latently in modern computers through the&nbsp;<a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Low_Pin_Count\" target=\"_blank\">Low Pin Count (LPC) bus<\/a>&nbsp;which is exposed on the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/hackaday.com\/tag\/tpm\/\">TPM port<\/a>&nbsp;in many modern motherboards. He created a hardware interface board that connects to the TPM port, exposes an actual ISA slot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He plugged in a Sound Blaster card via the adapter &#8211; and voila! It worked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/putHMSzu5og?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>More details on his <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@TheRasteri\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@TheRasteri\" target=\"_blank\">YouTube<\/a> site, or you can <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.vogons.org\/viewtopic.php?f=24&amp;t=93291\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.vogons.org\/viewtopic.php?f=24&amp;t=93291\" target=\"_blank\">follow the active development thread on Vogons<\/a>. No word yet if he&#8217;s producing any for purchase; but he does want to open source the work and wants to see if he can partner with PCBWay to develop them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I for one would absolutely buy a few of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fintek.com.tw\/index.php\/products\/i-o-controller-and-i-f-management\/item\/73-f85526\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.fintek.com.tw\/index.php\/products\/i-o-controller-and-i-f-management\/item\/73-f85526\">Fintek makes the F85526 PCI Express to ISA Bridge IC<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>PCI Express base spec 1.1 compliant<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Fully ISA bridge support except bus master<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>It seems promising, but it is unclear if anyone has built a functioning device around the chip. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vogons.org\/viewtopic.php?t=93291&amp;start=320\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.vogons.org\/viewtopic.php?t=93291&amp;start=320\">Vogons even discussed it on their thread<\/a> that also mentioned the <a href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9405\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9405\">dISAppointement ISA device<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Welcome to dISAppointment! Well, it has been disappointment for anyone wanting to use old retro sound cards or attach 5.25&#8243; floppy drives or MFM\/RLL hard drives in modern computers. They all relied on ISA controllers, which have not been supported for over a decade now. But is that about to change? I recently read about this really clever hacker&#8217;s adapter. &nbsp;TheRasteri found he could still access the ISA bus lurking latently in modern computers through the&nbsp;Low Pin Count (LPC) bus&nbsp;which&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"><a class=\"btn btn-default\" href=\"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/?p=9091\"> Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">  Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9091","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-retro-computing","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4WECr-2mD","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9091"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9091\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11634,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9091\/revisions\/11634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mattfife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}