> From: af4@ukc.ac.uk
> We appear to be homing in on the idea of implementing an ISA bus, albeit
> with the tricky bits chopped off. If we go along with this, might I suggest
> we use one of those cheapo IDE multi-I/O cards for the floppy controller,
> IDE hard disk controller, parallel port and additional serial ports?
. . .
> Andy.
I'd really like a system that needed no ISA cards to work. Including
floppy and two serial ports. The cost of the ISA card connector shouldn't
be neglected in comparing multi i/o cards to m/board implementations of
a "super i/o" chip.
We may find price parity between m/board and ISA versions of a multi i/o
capability (FDC/2Ser/1EnhancedParallel/IDE). Most of the connectors can
be (as they are on a multi i/o card) cheap 0.1" headers. No IRQ/Address
jumpers to set (screw) up. No ISA bus speeds to add wait states on each
i/o access. No need to handle multiple IRQ's from a single card in the
SubISA implementation (this is not likely significant).
I actually don't care about IDE as much as serials and FDC.
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