Fastest pc motherboard with isa slots?

[haywirepc]

Maybe off topic but I know the nerds here can help...

(And I mean that as a compliment!)

I happen to get an isa digital i/o card used for electronic experiments in trade.

I have an I believe a 600mhz motherboard/processor but I was wondering whats the fasest cpu/motherboard around with at least 2 or 3 isa slots and if anyone has any, I have some amiga goodies to trade for such a motherboard/processor ram combo...

This is intended for a home automation project that has speech recognition, or will have speech recog, so I need the fastest cpu/board I can get that has isa slots.

Any ideas guys? I have some aminet cd-roms, an amiga maniac amiga to svideo adapter, an amiga 500ps, and some other amiga items I will gladly trade for an appropriate pc motherboard/processor/ram combo... I believe this type of board should be AT power supplied if possible.

Thanks guys!

Steven

[Forcie]

Motherboards for consumer use with 3 ISA slots stopped being common in the Pentium 2 era, so that is probably what you should go for. If you are OK with 1 ISA slot, the fastest systems with a DMA-capable ISA bus should be Pentium 3 Tualatin (up to 1,4 GHz). Maybe there are some P3 systems with 2-3 slots if you look carefully. I run a Tualatin system as my main DOS/Win9x machine with an ISA sound card.

Industrial motherboards are a different business. Even P3 and P4-era industrials come with 3-4 ISA slots. There are modern (and expensive) industrial PC motherboards with Core2Duo and faster CPUs and ISA slots. The ones I have tried did not support true ISA DMA though.

[pyrre]

Maybe off topic but I know the nerds here can help...

(And I mean that as a compliment!)

I happen to get an isa digital i/o card used for electronic experiments in trade.

I have an I believe a 600mhz motherboard/processor but I was wondering whats the fasest cpu/motherboard around with at least 2 or 3 isa slots and if anyone has any, I have some amiga goodies to trade for such a motherboard/processor ram combo...

This is intended for a home automation project that has speech recognition, or will have speech recog, so I need the fastest cpu/board I can get that has isa slots.

Any ideas guys? I have some aminet cd-roms, an amiga maniac amiga to svideo adapter, an amiga 500ps, and some other amiga items I will gladly trade for an appropriate pc motherboard/processor/ram combo... I believe this type of board should be AT power supplied if possible.

Thanks guys!

Steven

Speed of the cpu and ram will have little or no impact on ISA slots...
The ISA bus is limited to 16 or 20mzh speeds.
Has a max ram config of 16mb (adress space)
Most periferals are 8 or 16bits... some few are 32bits...
Only impact the cpu will be with the managing software...

The pentium III platform is the last (if i am correct) that still had ISA slots on motherboards... if you are lucky you can find PIII boards, cpus and computers on ebay.
I recomend trying to trace down the Tulatin 1400 PIII cpu...
It is flying fast. AND some serverboards have ISA slots and dual cpu capability. And even 4 gig ram configs... (PC 133 DIMMs)
VIA chipsets are prefered. as they are truly 133mhz FSB..
Intel chipsets works just fine. but has severe limitations.
(440BX 133 is the best, and has a server derivative...)

If you manage to track it down, there are single board computers with backplanes that has lots more ISA slots...
But they are rare and expensive...
They also come in dual PIII (with tulatin support) and a maximum of 4 gig ram.... though, even rarer...

If you find such equipment. i think it is the best possible for any ISA application you may desire...

Links:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/RACKSERVER-1U-DUAL-1-266-GHz-1GB-TYAN-TIGER-200T-SERVER-/280459737307?pt=Desktop_PCs&hash=item414cb3f8db

http://www.ibasetechnology.net/news96.html

http://www.ibasetechnology.net/ib745.html

[Iggy]

I'd have to support what everyone else has suggested here.
A Tualatin cored PIII or Celeron would be your best bet.
I've had both of these and not only are they fairly powerful, they're also pretty easily overclocked.
At one time, I had a Celeron from this final core running at 1.6 GHz (and it greatly outperformed a comparably clocked P4 in everything except memory bandwidth).

If you hunt for one, you should still be able to find dual processor boards for the Tualatin PIII.
But remember, not all Tualatins support multi-processor operation.
Still, if you hunt down the right components, a dual processor system with two 1.2 to 1.4 GHz PIII should still be able to run most modern applications competitively.

[Piru]

I have an I believe a 600mhz motherboard/processor but I was wondering whats the fasest cpu/motherboard around with at least 2 or 3 isa slots

LGA775 mobos with ISA slots exist that'll handle at least FSB 1066 C2Q CPUs.
For example http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.html

New mobos are still manufactured with ISA slots, mainly due to them being required in the special controller PCs. Many factories still rely on custom ISA controller boards that have no PCI/PCI-E replacement.

EDIT: Some of the newer mobos don't do ISA DMA however, as ponted out.

[Forcie]

LGA775 mobos with ISA slots exist that'll handle at least FSB 1066 C2Q CPUs.
For example http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.html

Exactly what I referred to in the second post in this thread. I own a MB-P4BWA. As I said and the page clearly states, it does not support ISA DMA.

[Piru]

As I said and the page clearly states, it does not support ISA DMA.

Oh indeed, that can be a problem of course. I think the last industrial PCs I saw were c2d however, so I suppose those particular controller cards didn't require DMA.

[CdreCommodore]

I have an Asus P3B-F motherboard with an ISA slot, a Pentium III 850mhz processor, and 512MB (4x 128).  I built a lot of boxes out of these boards over the years because they're good little boards and quite stable.  They make good low-end Linux consoles.  I haven't needed this for some time now, so PM me if you're interested in it.

[Iggy]

Piru may have a point.
The computers my company manufactured in the '80s used an ISA bus w/o DMA and a lot of ISA cards don't use DMA.

If the I/O card in question doesn't use DMA then the boards he's mentioned would be an even more powerful solution.

[fishy_fiz]

Alternatively you could get a pci<->isa riser card and use any pc you like.

[haywirepc]

I have two of these isa cards that can be jumpered for different addresses, so I'm looking for a board with two isa slots.

Yes the speed of the processor won't matter to isa operations, but it will matter when I bog the system down with the speech recognition software. I can't have a system with the cpu at 90% just from speech recog software.

Tested with a 200mhz pentium 2 and thats what it was like. I'll run more tests with the 600mhz board I have here when I get a chance. I was hoping to get a 1ghz range pc for this project with 2 isa slots.

I'm not sure if the pci/isa converter boards will work with these isa cards. They write to specific addresses to turn the lines on/off in c or qbasic.

Thanks for the suggestions guys.

Steven

[joekster]

A bit expensive, but really cool...
http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-card-ROHS-usb2isar.html
http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-card-slot-version-usb2isasl.html


Review / Discussion:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=17495

[LoadWB]

A bit expensive, but really cool...
http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-card-ROHS-usb2isar.html
http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-card-slot-version-usb2isasl.html


Review / Discussion:
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=17495

That seems kind-of interesting.  In a big-box Amiga, like the 2000, I wonder if that could be used to provide ISA services via a USB interface like the Deneb, thus eliminating the requirement and complexity of a bridge board.

More on-topic, I believe I have several Super Socket 7 boards with two or three ISA with DMA.  I also believe the Epoc motherboard I have hosting a 1GHz Athlon has two or three ISA slots.  If interested, I'm willing to part with these for shipping costs alone as I need to clean out my house in preparation for a move.

[haywirepc]

Wow those are awesome thanks!

I guess I could use any pc with those...

Steven

[Iggy]

... I'll run more tests with the 600mhz board ...
Steven

Sounds like we're back to a high speed PIII as you best, most economical system.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tualatin-Pentium-III-S-1-4-GHz-P3-S-1400-512-133-SL657-/150584461806?pt=CPUs&hash=item230f8889ee

1.4 GHz Pentium III $8 + $1 S&H.

Alternately,

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Intel-Pentium-III-1000-MHz-1-0-GHz-socket-370-CPU-SL52R-Top-Coppermine-PIII-/220963433843?pt=CPUs&hash=item3372726d73

1 GHz Coppermine Pentium IIII for increased motherboard compatibility,
$5.49.