Interesting, but $149 is really expensive. I have my doubts as to it's usefulness for general retro computing. I'd be very surprised if you could plunk an old sound card in there and use it in a DOS game under Windows XP (the adapter doesn't support 9x).

If it is possible though, it could allow for some pretty unusual setups.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

it could allow for some pretty unusual setups.

Indeed! 😎

I recently acquired a couple of the 3-slot USB to ISA adapters for cheap. One came damaged (broken ISA slot and missing capacitor) and so I got a refund for that and then they second one arrived safe and sound. I still have to get a power supply since all I got was the cards themselves.

I had been wanting to get one of these for a few years now but the price was just too prohibitive. When I found one for cheap I snatched it up and ended up with 2 in the end.

The company did make a custom build of DOSBOX for specifically supporting these cards.. of which they provide the source.
http://arstech.com/install/cms-display/ste_uniformdos.html

According to them, I should have the download link included with the label that came with my cards.. I'll have to double check. This project is not one I currently have time for but I hope to get around to it in the not too distant future.

wow man, if there's an odd adapter, you got it!

One concern I have with this product is that they advertise it works with "any standard or custom ISA card". Problem is, AFAIK the USB standard doesn't support hardware interrupts, which some ISA devices require. I've been told this is why there is no such thing as a true USB to Parallel adapter (one that works with anything and everything that could connect to a parallel port, not just printers).

good point! I didn't know about the no-IRQ USB limitation, thanks

There's no support for IRQ or DMA on USB level but Windows virtualizes IRQ and DMA controllers and DOS programs will only see whatever windows/drivers allow. The driver of the USB thing can know ahead of time what data must be transferred to the card and can buffer it up thanks to DMA virtualization. Driver will have to periodically check if there are IRQs or other things requiring ISA to PC direction and pass these on to the virtual IRQ device that will then pass it to the DOS session.
It certainly is possible for it to work with random cards but there can and probably will be some amount of latency from any card side request reaching the software that must deal with that request and it can possibly cause issues (i.e buffer underruns leading to clicks and whatnot as far as sound cards go).

wow, you know stuff!

Has anybody here tried this USB ISA card from Aliexpress? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003265361 … 3c00dlzVS4&mp=1

It has an empty socket. Could this be used for an XT-IDE ROM, or a DOS ROM?

foone played with ISA2USB, even managed to almost run a CGA card over it, turns out it produces 12MHz signal instead of standard 14.318 making his CGA card generate 50Hz video :]

https://twitter.com/foone/status/1228127962320404480

he had to manually program every card, there is no working out of the box support for anything.
Dosbox is GPL, and this company doesnt provide download links = run away

Another one is https://hackaday.com/2020/10/16/isastm-runs-v … cards-over-usb/ Author even demonstrates it with patched PCem.

Jinxter wrote on 2022-01-28, 11:50:

Has anybody here tried this USB ISA card from Aliexpress? https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003265361 … 3c00dlzVS4&mp=1

It has an empty socket. Could this be used for an XT-IDE ROM, or a DOS ROM?

That doesn't appear to be a USB/ISA adapter. The description says it's an ISA backup card, the empty socket is for a flash chip used to store backups, and the USB connector as far as I understand is only used to trigger/control the backup process. Essentially an ISA disk controller with attached flash disk storage.

stamasd wrote on 2022-01-28, 13:44:

That doesn't appear to be a USB/ISA adapter. The description says it's an ISA backup card, the empty socket is for a flash chip used to store backups, and the USB connector as far as I understand is only used to trigger/control the backup process. Essentially an ISA disk controller with attached flash disk storage.

I just found this article where a guy explaines how to use it in DOS to transfere files. He also talk about the ROM socket. http://www.toughdev.com/content/2018/04/usb-f … to-usb-adapter/

He even manages to boot from a USB drive.

Maybe it is because of the translation, but the Spanish advertisement says that it can be used to exchange data between two computers.
I understand that it works the way most people would like.
The CH375B is also used on USB interface cards for Arduino to read/write from it.