Increasing the number of ISA slots

[blanning]

Has anyone tried one of these ISA bus expanders/extenders with a bridge board?

I bet the IBM 5161 will work with the a1060.

brian

[danbeaver]

The Tower expansion units do just that, add more ISA slots for either a BridgeBoard or Toaster.

The IBM expansion model would likely work, but why?

[Oldsmobile_Mike]

[JimS]

I used to have a board - I think it originally belonged in a Packard-Bell PC- that plugged into an ISA slot and had 3 ISA slots on one side and 2 on the other. I tried it in my A2000's farthest ISA slot and it did work... gave me 2 extra slots, since it took one and I could use the three on one side.... of course, those cards were hanging in mid air, and the case wouldn't go on. ;-)
 But it worked. ;-)

[blanning]

I used to have a board - I think it originally belonged in a Packard-Bell PC- that plugged into an ISA slot and had 3 ISA slots on one side and 2 on the other. I tried it in my A2000's farthest ISA slot and it did work... gave me 2 extra slots, since it took one and I could use the three on one side.... of course, those cards were hanging in mid air, and the case wouldn't go on. ;-)
 But it worked. ;-)

Many years ago, I had a 486 laptop for my university work.  It had a black and white LCD display which led to not enough video memory when I hooked it up to an external monitor.  It also had no way to attach a sound card.  So I bought the expansion chassis which included two ISA slots.  This allowed for an ISA video card and a sound card with a controller for a cdrom.  But there weren't any slots left for the 16550 serial board I needed for my 14.4 modem.  So I took the cover off the expansion chassis and plugged in the card you described.  "Hanging out in the air" was standing upright for me, so it worked ok.  I took power for the cdrom from another case with a dead 386 motherboard to appease the power supply.  I turned the whole mess on with a power strip and it worked perfectly.

I've often thought about what the "maximum configuration" for something like an A2000 would be like.  Plugging in a scsi controller for example would necessitate 7 drives.  Then one could plug in a buddha board for IDE goodness.  Then there's a deneb for USB, or the new rapid road thing.  Could I hook up all of these devices using an existing A2000 case in spite of the lack of drive bays?  Of course, such a machine would need a bridge board and an emplant board, CPU upgrade, 2mb chip ram/agnus upgrade, ethernet, sound, and whatever other goodness Jens cooks up.  This led to the question about ISA expansion chassis.  Because a 2000 doesn't have enough ISA slots for a video card, sound card, scsi card, ide card, and whatever other whacky things I could find, available IRQs aside.

Am I really the only retro computer fan out there that wondered what a PC that had a drive attached to every letter of the alphabet would look like?   lol

brian

[spaceman88]

The Tower expansion units do just that, add more ISA slots for either a BridgeBoard or Toaster.

The IBM expansion model would likely work, but why?

Yes, my Ambitious Technology 4000 tower has an Amiga 4000 desktop motherboard and a big board ( I think it was called "Big Bertha") full of ISA slots for TBC's etc.

BTW, having the motherboard mounted on it's side saved it from the dreaded NiCad. The battery had leaked, but the liquid dripped off the board on to the bare metal at the bottom of the case.

[danbeaver]

Yes, my Ambitious Technology 4000 tower has an Amiga 4000 desktop motherboard and a big board ( I think it was called "Big Bertha") full of ISA slots for TBC's etc.

[As we swing off topic]
BTW, having the motherboard mounted on it's side saved it from the dreaded NiCad. The battery had leaked, but the liquid dripped off the board on to the bare metal at the bottom of the case.

Not the NiCD battery solution everyone is looking for, but A+ on the effort

[blanning]

Yes, my Ambitious Technology 4000 tower has an Amiga 4000 desktop motherboard and a big board ( I think it was called "Big Bertha") full of ISA slots for TBC's etc.

BTW, having the motherboard mounted on it's side saved it from the dreaded NiCad. The battery had leaked, but the liquid dripped off the board on to the bare metal at the bottom of the case.

I believe the TBCs only used the ISA bus for power though.  I bet all the other lines weren't connected for some of those towers.

edit:

yep...    http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1837

[spaceman88]

Not the NiCD battery solution everyone is looking for, but A+ on the effort

I removed the battery as soon as I got the unit from the previous owner, but there is one more 4000 motherboard still working because it was in a tower.

[spaceman88]

I believe the TBCs only used the ISA bus for power though.  I bet all the other lines weren't connected for some of those towers.

edit:

yep...    http://www.bigbookofamigahardware.com/bboah/product.aspx?id=1837

Yes, the TBC in my tower was controlled by a cable from the serial port to what looks like a phone jack on the TBC. The video in/out is on the external jacks going to the Toaster, so the ISA slots just hold them in place and feed them power. I see from your link my expansion board was called "Big Ethyl" (not bertha, as I said before).

[motrucker]

Yes, my Ambitious Technology 4000 tower has an Amiga 4000 desktop motherboard and a big board ( I think it was called "Big Bertha") full of ISA slots for TBC's etc.

BTW, having the motherboard mounted on it's side saved it from the dreaded NiCad. The battery had leaked, but the liquid dripped off the board on to the bare metal at the bottom of the case.

 I used to have a tower that looked like that. Huge thing on wheels! Only pieces left are a few ISA cards (SCSI card & sound/game card). The tower is long gone...

[JimS]

"Hanging out in the air" was standing upright for me, so it worked ok.  I took power for the cdrom from another case with a dead 386 motherboard to appease the power supply.  I turned the whole mess on with a power strip and it worked perfectly.
 This led to the question about ISA expansion chassis.  

Back in the days of the 1000, there was a gizmo called "Bill's Board", I think, that plugged into the 1000's expansion slot and gave a whole bunch of slots, both Zorro and ISA. The thing was huge... After the Bridgeboard came out I remember a lot of folks clamoring for the expensive ISA cards that had all the peripherals on one board. As to the extra drives, well we used to use PC minitowers as external drive bays. Instead of dead motherboards, a big resistor served as dummy load for the power supply.