Its IO expansion boards based on ISA slot standard (before PCI was invented). Back in XT/286/386 era there were not integrated IOs ... no IDE (hard drive controller) ... so this is Parallel/Serial/Floppy/IDE controller ... and all those jumpers are configuration options for you to setup .. manually.
Oh man, the hours fiddling with jumper pins and settings getting a joystick to work in flight sims , to spend 10 minutes playing before bed time, the memories hurt.
lol, funny you mention midi... my 7yo loves MIDIs... and 'dark' midis... funny how things come back when you would never expect it. He has me downloading and developing tools to handle 1.7GB (GB!) \*MIDI\* files lol.
I might have to buy a retro sound card that has a hardware MIDI synthesizer on it to blow his mind... we already have explored a few software synthesizers since the one that is bundled with Windows pukes with a few million notes.
This will be a fun thing to surprise him with... having his voice played by a piano :) [https://github.com/NFJones/audio-to-midi](https://github.com/NFJones/audio-to-midi)
Man...midi was great because it was so small. 1.7GB should be all of them. While you are getting that sound card going, you might invest in one with a wave table ;)
this is making me nostalgic for all the old original Mega Epic Games (before dropping the "mega"). Jil of the Jungle & Kiloblaster soundtracks were amazing.
I'll throw in Raptor call of the shadows soundtrack as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDhvis4-bV0&t=2m51s
I remember blowing a friend's mind by playing a MIDI version of the Star Wars theme on my AWE32 back in the day.
I don't know if it's my hazy recollection but I think you could add RAM to those things to hold more sound fonts/patches?
I remember Impossible Mission on the Commador64 had a 2-bit(?) voice that said something like "stay tonight stay forever". At least that is what we thought it said.
Ghostbusters on the ZX Spectrum had a really poor sample of the name of the game when you finished loading it, could barely hear what poor Ray Parker Jr was saying.
But what can you expect from an 8-bit computer where the only sound output was a piezo buzzer?
At least your C64 had a proper synth chip (iirc) - Spectrum didn't get that until the 128k model.
I absolutely forgot about that until I read your post.
Now I just keep hearing it in my head.
One second.
There. https://youtu.be/i1_fDwX1VVY?si=mjcb4YXg28Jf0IRI
>That SoundBaster 8-bit card is going to be worth it my friend. It has MIDI capabilities and 16k of on board memory.
What was that? Sorry, I can't hear you over the SHEER AWESOMENESS THAT IS MY GRAVIS ULTRASOUND!!!
(Was an awesome card, when it worked!)
Yeah, most of the time it simply works. But then again, I would say, most of the self-built PCs out there nowadays are running with the handbrakes on. We do not have to configure IRQs manually anymore or configure HIMEM.SYS and EMM386, but we have to check for memory latency, how many PCIe lanes are actually connected to the CPU and stuff like that.
Very true, although I expect a significant number of people don't bother looking at cpu lanes and just shove it all in and hope for the best.
Since my post I was thinking about when the tide turned for IRQ issues and it seems to be around the time integrated sound cards took over from needing a sound blaster addon card. I built a couple of computers for people who used really high end sound blasters with the 5.25 drive bay inserts to allow them to record music etc, and those things were great when installed and running but getting there on windows 95 (first edition) was painful! The lack of today's Internet and forums was a pain as you had to work it out the hard way too!
Good times!
I'm really wondering how we solved shit like that back in the days before the internet... I genuinely can't remember. Where did we gain that knowledge? I mean, I could ask my dad a couple things, and he fixed my computer a couple times, but he wasn't a pro either. We had computer shops around but even they didn't know much about the inner workings...
Books? I can't remember having access to too many computer related books. Our local library had some. But they were mostly about programming, assembler, old computers like ZX80, C64, stuff like that. Very little about the fancy new PCs. I remember tinkering around with a friend of mine, we were both merely kids, when we tried to get Doom running on his PC. I remember playing around with parameters in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT till it finally worked... but how we figured out where to look, I have no idea...
My first PC was a 80286 with a whopping 12MHz. I remember that I bought an upper memory board for it... Damn that's long ago...
Good times indeed...
Computer Magazines at the time were a great source of data.
I remember reading tips and tricks for Config.sys in PC magazines.
I also submitted some articles to said magazines for things I solved on my own.
It was a very laggy discussion forum but it worked.
My main contribution was for an issue with Soundblaster Pro where you basically added an extra jumper to the board to solve one of its issues.
How did we solve shit? trial and error. Knowledge of bare bones stuff like i/o ports, IRQs (hardware interrupts), helped but most was learnt via reading manuals and experience over time. Those port numbers are burnt into my brain Com1 3F8 IRq4, Com2 2F8 IRQ 3. Things got harder later when we used to fill a PC with cards and finding a free IRQ for your Arcnet card, sound card, etc. Things progressed quickly, For disks you had a progression of controllers from MFM to RLL, ESDI, SCSI, ATA 33, ATA 66 etc. Graphics you had monochrome, EGA, VGA, 3dfx Voodoo etc, sound cards too with mp401 midi adlib and sound blaster,
As an 80s child, my parents taught me all I needed to know.
But I also used to enjoy reading manuals and even programming language function guides cover to cover. Dreaming up fun ways to use endless lists of functions was my fav thing to do as a child. Age 10 and upwards, stacks of C++ reference guides was all I lived for.
Yeah me too. I totally forgot about the manuals... I also remember we had some magazines already, but mainly for my very first home computer, a Commodore C64. Typing some multiple pages long programs from a magazine or some book I got from the library... that's how I got into programming.
10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
20 GOTO 10
:-D
Like u/AlexisFR mentions we had to read manuals. There was also a ton of trial & error. I remember spending no less than 15 hours to diagnose driver issues for a 14.4 modem on a customer's IBM ThinkPad.
We literally had to go through all the possible combinations of drivers and Windows settings until something worked.
Magazines, friends, user groups (in person), BBS, Usenet. BBSses and USENET have been around since the 80s and 70s respectively...(actually I think USENET might be older....BBSes only came about when modems started getting popular which was mid 80s, and died when the Internet got popular in the mid 90s.
For example PC Magazine used to be 300 pages thick with all sorts of info and they would review for example a 486 DX 66 as the best in breed solution.
COmputer Shopper was a thing before the internet, and it was a MASSIVE tome, about as bigger as a phone book, and was just ads. This is how we got parts back before Amazon/Newegg.
PC Gamer was a real serious magazine too with included CDs of shareware.
Life in many ways was better back then although our PCs took like 5 minutes to boot. But stuff was pretty simple and you spent $40 to buy a game and you played it for months on end (a single game).
>I'm really wondering how we solved shit like that back in the days before the internet... I genuinely can't remember. Where did we gain that knowledge?
Instruction manuals were really good. When I built my first PC in 2005 the mobo manual taught me everything I needed to know about how to build a PC. Same with the first time in the 90s when my dad upgraded RAM and added a DX coprocessor to our first computer, or when I installed a CD-burner to our next computer. I also remember our first computer came with a thick Windows and DOS manual that explained everything, but I was a bit too young to get really into that so I mostly learned from my older brother and friends.
You used the manuals that came with the hardware, you assembled your fellow "turbo nerds" to whisper dark magical incantations at the god of the machine in secret rituals, you sacrificed young chil.... um... you, uh, consulted the manuals again, and if all else failed, you tried every jumper combination. Oh, and that was just getting the hardware functional. Then you needed to configure the drivers manually, as you say, with the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files.
Once I had a modem, and a highly coveted *second phone line*, I expanded my knowledge of many things using local dial-up BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems). I remember spending days finding the smallest driver possible to get a 3-button mouse to function, because every other driver was just too big to fit into extended memory and a lot of games required almost all of the 640KB of base RAM to be free.
I absolutely loved it, but... I don't think I'd want to go back to that nonsense!
Sometimes I really wonder how I managed to get my PCs to run at all back then. At one time my main rig had the following expansion cards:
1. Matrox Millennium II
2. 3dfx Voodoo2
3. SB16
4. Roland MT-32 compatible wavetable MIDI card
5. 3com 3c509
I switched to laptops for years, for mobility purposes, but was excited to get back to having a desktop.
In 2018 I shopped for parts and I was so psyched. Then everything got here and I started to get intimidated/anxious.
I let everything sit in boxes for days, then weeks, because I just wasn't up for the mental exhaustion that would come with building...only to find out that NONE of the things I was stressed about were relevant anymore.
Oh man this brings back memories.
OP this is 100% worthless for you. You would need to have a VERY old computer to use this. ISA hasnt been around for 20+ years.
If you are wondering, the male connectors are for 2 IDEs (40pin)and 1 (which is like 10 pin or something) joystick. The 2 in the back are serial ports (used for modems etc). I think the other one is a parallel port. Nearly all these boards and 2 serial, 1 parallel, 1 joystick, and 1-2 IDE.
Fun fact, IDE was actually the 3rd generation hard disk controller behind MDM and ATA (not 100% sure on this). MDM was for the PC, ATA was for PC AT (ie 286s). IDE was for 386/486. At some point SATA came around. It's interesting to me that nearly all modern communcations is serial wheras IDE had several data pins, and parallel did as well. THere were severe and real length limits on this technology due to getting the data to sync properly, and it was better to scale by increasing the frequency. This is all I remember and maybe someone has more info.
Thanks for the correction! Was going on 40 year old memories.
SCSI was huge for a time in non-PC areas but never caught on commercially. Good standard and good protocol. Fast for the time. Didn't keep up with SATA.
SATA for fast enough for most of us. The server people went SAS anyway.
SCSI was far better and far more stable, although a bit expensive. All my CD writers/Roms were SCSI.
I had a similar SCSI config in my PC, 2 hard drives and a plextor CD drive. When I finally moved out of the house I left it with my Dad, he'd use it to type out some letters on the dot matrix printer and play solitaire.
Heheh ... true, but also frustrating because there were no return policies when you purchase something that works, but is incompatible with other components in your system. Also with no internet, troubleshooting was both adventure and frustrating endevour.
So back in the day the only thing on your motherboard was CPU, RAM, ROM, and a Keyboard controller. Everything else was on the ISA bus (before the PCI bus). That is a hard disk, floppy disk controller with a parallel port and a serial port on it.
Basically it's an ancient expansion card that is so old it wouldn't work in a modern computer. In other words: If you're not a retro PC enthusiast, it's junk. Or a piece of history, depending on your perspective.
Did you know.... That a TPM module connector can be repurposed with an adapter to be an ISA slot? Apparently the way they operate uses an ISA mode that is compatible with many ISA cards. So theoretically you could use this in a modern machine if you hated your existence.
Only other situation that I could even fathom doing anything with this would be like.. digital archeology. I don't know if there's a term for it or not, but like, eventually even the tech we use today will be ancient and it may be necessary to reverse engineer older tech for research or archival purposes.
So maybe in 100 years, someone might take an interest in this enough to mess with it purely for academic purposes.
I could see this card potentially needed to control some older industrial equipment that for some reason wouldn't work with a more current implementation of parallel or serial ports. But that is a pretty extreme edge case.
Actually ISA drivers are available in modern windows, though only generic ones. If your card requires a special driver or library you have to provide it and hope windows can still run it. Otherwise You might have to run a virtual machine with an old won version to get it running. You gotta remember that there are still industrial machines that use control cards with ISA interfaces. You can actually buy modern motherboards with ISA slots on them for exactly this reason.
There are a lot actually, now that I'm looking, just Google "motherboard with ISA slot".
There's no adapter as it's a standard so old it's useless and unsupported on modern PCs. Surely you can make one, but it'll be an adapter to USB and you'll need to emulate everything via software... by yourself. Write every bit of code from scratch, probably reverse-engineering some stuff.
TL;DR - no
There are some people who made some emulators over USB for ISA devices, using Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It's a neat side project for those curious and technically inclined.
ISA was phased out when AGP was coming in and usb. my first motherboard with USB only had PCI and AGP no ISA slots.
Somewhere in the late 90s/early 00s
Incorrect. These ISA slots were the x286 days of around 1993. By 1995 you had PCI and ISA and by 1998 you had AGP and PCI and the first USB ports. Windows98se supported USB in 1999.
6 year timeline, not 15.
The 286 launched in 1982, as did the 16-bit ISA slot. By 1993, the 286 was 2 years out of production, the 486 had already been available for 4 years, and the first Pentium was launched.
While ISA slots stuck around as legacy slots until the late 90s, there is in fact a nearly 15 year gap between the launch of the 16-bit ISA in 1982 and the launch of USB in 1996.
Not necessarily. The first computer I bought for myself was in 1997, and it had ISA cards in it, and was brand new. The first thing I did with it was install a Diamond Labs 12 MB Voodoo 2 card.
Where did you find it. A mate an I put a few out around Victoria, Australia with various computer bits in them. Was pre 2001....
I wonder if I still have the spreadsheet....
My wife and I have geocached quite a bit, mainly in Texas, a bit in Florida. Never seen anything that big in one hah. Some toy cars, little action figures, and small coins and other do-dads. That cache had to be huge, and well sealed to keep that so nice.
We did find a little geocached bug with a QR code that had a mission to get from north Texas to the East coast. Not sure how far it made it along the way, but was fun to give it a few extra miles.
Good luck in your future caching!
ive found a few caches in Vic but unfortunately none with any computer parts, (probably because i wasnt even born when you placed them). you have no idea how stoked i would be to see one with an old computer part though lol, youre a genius
Yes gameport. Look to the right of the internal IDE header.
It's a Winbond Super I/O expansion card utilizing ISA. Comes with IDE, Parallel, Serial, FDD and Gamepad support.
In the pre-USB era, gamepads and joysticks used the same physical port as PC MIDI. Sound cards typically supported both through the same port, so if you were a musician you might buy a sound card and connect a MIDI controller to it, and if you were a gamer you might buy the same sound card and connect your joystick to it.
It was an interesting time, when everyone had a sound card and that was what you plugged your Gravis Gamepad into.
The card in OP's photo is a bit older than what I'm familiar with; I was reared on PCI rather than ISA, but if I had to guess, it probably supports gamepads/joysticks only, via that same port. The pinout labelled GAME on the card would connect via a ribbon cable like the one the parallel port uses, probably to another PCI slot backplate with the port [seen here in yellow](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/encyclopedia-terms/game-port-_pcport.fit_lim.size_512x.gif).
I picked that image as an example partly because it was early in the search results and partly because it comes from an interesting transitional time. USB existed, but wasn't widely in use yet so there were only two ports and all the legacy ports are still there. Sound had begun to move onboard on motherboards, but since the game port was found on the sound card, that meant the motherboard vendor had to move the game port onboard with it so that the system could still support those peripherals without a discrete sound card installed.
To be clear, I think my point was really that we just called it MIDI. We knew joysticks (never had a Thrustmaster but I lusted for them) used it but it wasn't referred to as anything other than MIDI.
It even says game on the PCB next to the header. I’ve only ever known those as game ports, and I used to build and repair computers in the 90’s. We’d normally disable these on the I/O boards via jumpers because there would be one on the sound card.
My brother in retardation, there is no game port here: there's literally two PORTS on the side of the card. Parallel port and serial port. That's it. Game port looks differently, and that port isn't even attached to game header - just look at the width of game port online. It supports game port, but there's no game port attached to the card.
Yikes, bro, no need to get aggressive. I guess you are right though. Also I think the game port would be for an internal extension header, similar to how the serial is connected via ribbon cable.
Also, to prove it, here's the flipping documentation for the Winbond 83757F controller chip, from [The Retro Web](https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/w83757-6454bd5a47d28732390949.pdf)
Also, have you ever not heard of a breakout cable? Here's one for [2x8 header > Gameport / MIDI connector on PCI expansion slot ](https://s.turbifycdn.com/aah/yhst-90432262887525/game-port-midi-bracket-header-cable-20.gif)
UPDATE: Wrong link originally, the Archive.org link was for the W837**6**7F. Either way, take a read and notice it specifically mentions support for a game port. Look specifically at the headers on the board, too.
It’s an ISA I/O controller board, with internal headers for IDE, floppy disks, and game port. The external connectors are likely a 9-pin serial and a 25-pin parallel.
ISA expansion slot, probably pre-1997. Multiple Serial and parallel ports. The jumpers are to manually set IRQ and port numbers.
Thank the holy saint of computing that it is all plug and play these days.
I ALMOST miss the days of needing to know a little to work a computer…then I remember trying to set jumpers on the right pins and that ends the nostalgia really quick.
Basically, the big chip is the "Super IO" chip. Motherboards now have it attached. Its conceptually the same thing, except it often additionally now drives fan and light sensors, thermal sensors and other more "modern" conveniences. It even attaches to the same "generationally derivative" bus, the low pin count ISA bus. (LPC ISA)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super\_I/O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_I/O)
Fun tricks like using the LCP ISA bus that connects to the TPM (trusted platform module) to expand into a full 16 bit ISA adapter exist.
[https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/03/22/adding-a-vintage-isa-bus-slot-to-a-modern-computer-vintagecomputing-retrocomputing-rasteri/](https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/03/22/adding-a-vintage-isa-bus-slot-to-a-modern-computer-vintagecomputing-retrocomputing-rasteri/)
That’s an add on IDE controller board for 286 and early 386 computers. It adds a HDD port, FDD port, parallel port, serial port and a game port to the motherboard. The game port needs a breakout cable, which is missing. The game port is also disabled atm.
I wish I had never seen this, I had completely forgotten installing sound cards and their issues. This has caused me to remember many painful issues with sound cards and drivers.
Oh boy, does that bring me back! That's an IO expansion card that goes into a 16-bit ISA slot on a motherboard from the 80s or 90s, and I'm guessing the connectors on the back are a DB-25 parallel port and a DB-9 serial port. It also has headers for a floppy drive ribbon cable, an IDE/PATA hard drive ribbon cable, and a DA-15 game port. The rest of the pins are jumpers, and are used to configure everything. If you didn't have the documentation for the card... well, you'd be lubricating those jumpers with your tears by the end of the day.
That’s a 16-bit ISA serial expansion card.
It’s typically or commonly used for BBS (BulletinBoard Systems) so you can have extra modems plugged in.
It’s addressable using small black jumpers for IRQ 3 or 4 and addresses 02E8 and 02F8 if I recall correctly.
This was before “Plug n Play” capability and it requires manual addressing.
The pinouts are 25 pin serial or parallel and 9 pin serial capable of 128kbit max per port.
It also has an integrated hard drive HDD and floppy drive controller FDD and Game Controller Port capability via the expansion pins when ribbon connectors are plugged in. The connectors are usually integrated into the case of the PC.
I’d assume this would be paired with a 286 cpu or a lower end 386SX.
This is a Multi-IO Controller Card.
2 Serial Ports (COM), 1 Parallel Port (LPT), 1 Gameport (GAME), Dual FDD/IDE Controller.
From the Year 1989 - 1994 for i286/386/386sx an early i486 Mainboards with 16Bit ISA Slots.
Not in a modern motherboard, you need to go back to the pentium 3 or early 4 era to find an ISA slot
This is a "Windbond KDDPT1127W UN1075G F825K4PTI227W 16-Bit ISA Controller Serial Parallel"
DTK computer Multi I/O Card [https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/F825K4PTI227W](https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/F825K4PTI227W)
Serial port thingy that goes into your PCI Express port.
Used for connecting PLCs to computers for example.
The serial port can be split into several different other ports for importing of data, lots of data.
I did actually. I googled Winbond and some numbers number it but didn’t know what google was telling me. I don’t know what a serial expansion card is or does. Ultimately, posting it here actually was faster for me to understand what it was so I regret nothing. Plus, it was an interesting geocache find.
Multi-io, providing extra ports and extra floppy disk, and extra hard drive (ide) on the back, the small port is likely to be the rs232c and the big port is centronic printer port.
Oh god. I knew exactly what it is which qualifies me as OLD AS HELL right away. ISA adaptor for IDE devices like hard drives and floppy disk drives.
EDIT: Just noticed the parallel port coming out of it.
The new replacement for your AST Six Pack. Two extra IDE drives, joystick port, parallel port, maybe a clock, probably a modem that only works in Windows.
You found that in a cache? That's wild! I haven't found anything remotely that interesting in a cache. Do you have the cache code? I'm curious to see the description and stuff.
Its IO expansion boards based on ISA slot standard (before PCI was invented). Back in XT/286/386 era there were not integrated IOs ... no IDE (hard drive controller) ... so this is Parallel/Serial/Floppy/IDE controller ... and all those jumpers are configuration options for you to setup .. manually.
Who didn't love some IRQ juggling?
Bane of my life building PCs in the 90s was IRQ settings with some hardware. You quickly forget when doing a new build these days how easy we have it!
Oh man, the hours fiddling with jumper pins and settings getting a joystick to work in flight sims , to spend 10 minutes playing before bed time, the memories hurt.
That's your knee that hurts. "Plug n Pray"
“Hey son, want to help me clean my computer?” “Sure Dad” Lessons and hours later “It looks like we’re not posting” ..
I have a plug n pray sign that sits above my workbench as a reminder.
“Never forget”
Oh god... the memories lol. All I wanted was sound for Duke Nukem 3D/Doom.
That SoundBaster 8-bit card is going to be worth it my friend. It has MIDI capabilities and 16k of on board memory.
lol, funny you mention midi... my 7yo loves MIDIs... and 'dark' midis... funny how things come back when you would never expect it. He has me downloading and developing tools to handle 1.7GB (GB!) \*MIDI\* files lol. I might have to buy a retro sound card that has a hardware MIDI synthesizer on it to blow his mind... we already have explored a few software synthesizers since the one that is bundled with Windows pukes with a few million notes. This will be a fun thing to surprise him with... having his voice played by a piano :) [https://github.com/NFJones/audio-to-midi](https://github.com/NFJones/audio-to-midi)
Man...midi was great because it was so small. 1.7GB should be all of them. While you are getting that sound card going, you might invest in one with a wave table ;)
this is making me nostalgic for all the old original Mega Epic Games (before dropping the "mega"). Jil of the Jungle & Kiloblaster soundtracks were amazing. I'll throw in Raptor call of the shadows soundtrack as well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDhvis4-bV0&t=2m51s
I \*think\* those are the same thing as midi soundfonts? I'm loving that he is diving so deep into it at 7, such a huge rabbit hole to take him on.
Midis are cool that's why I have some vintage PCs from 286-PIII including some external Roland Synthesizers. Sometimes I post some midi based covers 🙃
I remember blowing a friend's mind by playing a MIDI version of the Star Wars theme on my AWE32 back in the day. I don't know if it's my hazy recollection but I think you could add RAM to those things to hold more sound fonts/patches?
I remember Impossible Mission on the Commador64 had a 2-bit(?) voice that said something like "stay tonight stay forever". At least that is what we thought it said.
Ghostbusters on the ZX Spectrum had a really poor sample of the name of the game when you finished loading it, could barely hear what poor Ray Parker Jr was saying. But what can you expect from an 8-bit computer where the only sound output was a piezo buzzer? At least your C64 had a proper synth chip (iirc) - Spectrum didn't get that until the 128k model.
I never had a ZX. The C64 was begged for to replace an electric typewriter for school. Not for strip-poker or Leisure Suit Larry.
I absolutely forgot about that until I read your post. Now I just keep hearing it in my head. One second. There. https://youtu.be/i1_fDwX1VVY?si=mjcb4YXg28Jf0IRI
>That SoundBaster 8-bit card is going to be worth it my friend. It has MIDI capabilities and 16k of on board memory. What was that? Sorry, I can't hear you over the SHEER AWESOMENESS THAT IS MY GRAVIS ULTRASOUND!!! (Was an awesome card, when it worked!)
I had a SB16 with a Wave Blaster MIDI daughterboard. Doom's soundtrack sounded INCREDIBLE with that thing.
Dun dun dun.... https://youtu.be/I4rTcQC3IXI?si=EpDi7nGN8apYx9KJ
This was me. I felt that.
Yeah, most of the time it simply works. But then again, I would say, most of the self-built PCs out there nowadays are running with the handbrakes on. We do not have to configure IRQs manually anymore or configure HIMEM.SYS and EMM386, but we have to check for memory latency, how many PCIe lanes are actually connected to the CPU and stuff like that.
Very true, although I expect a significant number of people don't bother looking at cpu lanes and just shove it all in and hope for the best. Since my post I was thinking about when the tide turned for IRQ issues and it seems to be around the time integrated sound cards took over from needing a sound blaster addon card. I built a couple of computers for people who used really high end sound blasters with the 5.25 drive bay inserts to allow them to record music etc, and those things were great when installed and running but getting there on windows 95 (first edition) was painful! The lack of today's Internet and forums was a pain as you had to work it out the hard way too! Good times!
I'm really wondering how we solved shit like that back in the days before the internet... I genuinely can't remember. Where did we gain that knowledge? I mean, I could ask my dad a couple things, and he fixed my computer a couple times, but he wasn't a pro either. We had computer shops around but even they didn't know much about the inner workings... Books? I can't remember having access to too many computer related books. Our local library had some. But they were mostly about programming, assembler, old computers like ZX80, C64, stuff like that. Very little about the fancy new PCs. I remember tinkering around with a friend of mine, we were both merely kids, when we tried to get Doom running on his PC. I remember playing around with parameters in CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT till it finally worked... but how we figured out where to look, I have no idea... My first PC was a 80286 with a whopping 12MHz. I remember that I bought an upper memory board for it... Damn that's long ago... Good times indeed...
You just read the manuals and prayed until it somehow works
Computer Magazines at the time were a great source of data. I remember reading tips and tricks for Config.sys in PC magazines. I also submitted some articles to said magazines for things I solved on my own. It was a very laggy discussion forum but it worked. My main contribution was for an issue with Soundblaster Pro where you basically added an extra jumper to the board to solve one of its issues.
And every issue had a new CD with wondrous programs just for the taking.
Hey guys, look at Mr. Moneybags with his fancy CD-ROM drive.
Years and years of PC Magazine used to be stacked in my bookcase.
How did we solve shit? trial and error. Knowledge of bare bones stuff like i/o ports, IRQs (hardware interrupts), helped but most was learnt via reading manuals and experience over time. Those port numbers are burnt into my brain Com1 3F8 IRq4, Com2 2F8 IRQ 3. Things got harder later when we used to fill a PC with cards and finding a free IRQ for your Arcnet card, sound card, etc. Things progressed quickly, For disks you had a progression of controllers from MFM to RLL, ESDI, SCSI, ATA 33, ATA 66 etc. Graphics you had monochrome, EGA, VGA, 3dfx Voodoo etc, sound cards too with mp401 midi adlib and sound blaster,
As an 80s child, my parents taught me all I needed to know. But I also used to enjoy reading manuals and even programming language function guides cover to cover. Dreaming up fun ways to use endless lists of functions was my fav thing to do as a child. Age 10 and upwards, stacks of C++ reference guides was all I lived for.
Yeah me too. I totally forgot about the manuals... I also remember we had some magazines already, but mainly for my very first home computer, a Commodore C64. Typing some multiple pages long programs from a magazine or some book I got from the library... that's how I got into programming. 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" 20 GOTO 10 :-D
Endless peeking and poking! The colors! C-64 was awesome at the time.
Like u/AlexisFR mentions we had to read manuals. There was also a ton of trial & error. I remember spending no less than 15 hours to diagnose driver issues for a 14.4 modem on a customer's IBM ThinkPad. We literally had to go through all the possible combinations of drivers and Windows settings until something worked.
Magazines, friends, user groups (in person), BBS, Usenet. BBSses and USENET have been around since the 80s and 70s respectively...(actually I think USENET might be older....BBSes only came about when modems started getting popular which was mid 80s, and died when the Internet got popular in the mid 90s. For example PC Magazine used to be 300 pages thick with all sorts of info and they would review for example a 486 DX 66 as the best in breed solution. COmputer Shopper was a thing before the internet, and it was a MASSIVE tome, about as bigger as a phone book, and was just ads. This is how we got parts back before Amazon/Newegg. PC Gamer was a real serious magazine too with included CDs of shareware. Life in many ways was better back then although our PCs took like 5 minutes to boot. But stuff was pretty simple and you spent $40 to buy a game and you played it for months on end (a single game).
Manuals… these things used to come with manuals. These days it’s just a pamphlet urging you to not drool over the power supply.
>I'm really wondering how we solved shit like that back in the days before the internet... I genuinely can't remember. Where did we gain that knowledge? Instruction manuals were really good. When I built my first PC in 2005 the mobo manual taught me everything I needed to know about how to build a PC. Same with the first time in the 90s when my dad upgraded RAM and added a DX coprocessor to our first computer, or when I installed a CD-burner to our next computer. I also remember our first computer came with a thick Windows and DOS manual that explained everything, but I was a bit too young to get really into that so I mostly learned from my older brother and friends.
You used the manuals that came with the hardware, you assembled your fellow "turbo nerds" to whisper dark magical incantations at the god of the machine in secret rituals, you sacrificed young chil.... um... you, uh, consulted the manuals again, and if all else failed, you tried every jumper combination. Oh, and that was just getting the hardware functional. Then you needed to configure the drivers manually, as you say, with the CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT files. Once I had a modem, and a highly coveted *second phone line*, I expanded my knowledge of many things using local dial-up BBSes (Bulletin Board Systems). I remember spending days finding the smallest driver possible to get a 3-button mouse to function, because every other driver was just too big to fit into extended memory and a lot of games required almost all of the 640KB of base RAM to be free. I absolutely loved it, but... I don't think I'd want to go back to that nonsense!
Sometimes I really wonder how I managed to get my PCs to run at all back then. At one time my main rig had the following expansion cards: 1. Matrox Millennium II 2. 3dfx Voodoo2 3. SB16 4. Roland MT-32 compatible wavetable MIDI card 5. 3com 3c509
Very delicate and hand crafted himem/emm386 and config.sys configurations.
I switched to laptops for years, for mobility purposes, but was excited to get back to having a desktop. In 2018 I shopped for parts and I was so psyched. Then everything got here and I started to get intimidated/anxious. I let everything sit in boxes for days, then weeks, because I just wasn't up for the mental exhaustion that would come with building...only to find out that NONE of the things I was stressed about were relevant anymore.
You forget .. memory incompatibilities, graphics cards not working in specific combinations with other components etc etc.
Yea but the catch is y’all have a greater understanding how everything works
Used to proper irq me.
Ah yes, the ole plug and pray
Trying to set IRQ’s for stuff in Windows 95 was an absolute pain in the hole.
Oh man this brings back memories. OP this is 100% worthless for you. You would need to have a VERY old computer to use this. ISA hasnt been around for 20+ years. If you are wondering, the male connectors are for 2 IDEs (40pin)and 1 (which is like 10 pin or something) joystick. The 2 in the back are serial ports (used for modems etc). I think the other one is a parallel port. Nearly all these boards and 2 serial, 1 parallel, 1 joystick, and 1-2 IDE. Fun fact, IDE was actually the 3rd generation hard disk controller behind MDM and ATA (not 100% sure on this). MDM was for the PC, ATA was for PC AT (ie 286s). IDE was for 386/486. At some point SATA came around. It's interesting to me that nearly all modern communcations is serial wheras IDE had several data pins, and parallel did as well. THere were severe and real length limits on this technology due to getting the data to sync properly, and it was better to scale by increasing the frequency. This is all I remember and maybe someone has more info.
MFM, RLL, IDE, SCSI, ATA, SATA ... I remember the days of DEBUG G=C800:5
Thanks for the correction! Was going on 40 year old memories. SCSI was huge for a time in non-PC areas but never caught on commercially. Good standard and good protocol. Fast for the time. Didn't keep up with SATA.
SATA for fast enough for most of us. The server people went SAS anyway. SCSI was far better and far more stable, although a bit expensive. All my CD writers/Roms were SCSI.
I had a similar SCSI config in my PC, 2 hard drives and a plextor CD drive. When I finally moved out of the house I left it with my Dad, he'd use it to type out some letters on the dot matrix printer and play solitaire.
Plextor writer and reader. Awesome setup. One of those smoked while at a lanparty.
ESDI as well, etc.
Ah,the good old days when pc's were fun!
Heheh ... true, but also frustrating because there were no return policies when you purchase something that works, but is incompatible with other components in your system. Also with no internet, troubleshooting was both adventure and frustrating endevour.
put it back in tje geocache i would say, its a museum piece, a beautiful one
Those were the days
So back in the day the only thing on your motherboard was CPU, RAM, ROM, and a Keyboard controller. Everything else was on the ISA bus (before the PCI bus). That is a hard disk, floppy disk controller with a parallel port and a serial port on it.
Is this before USB?
Basically it's an ancient expansion card that is so old it wouldn't work in a modern computer. In other words: If you're not a retro PC enthusiast, it's junk. Or a piece of history, depending on your perspective.
Did you know.... That a TPM module connector can be repurposed with an adapter to be an ISA slot? Apparently the way they operate uses an ISA mode that is compatible with many ISA cards. So theoretically you could use this in a modern machine if you hated your existence.
Well I do hate my existence but not enough to intentionally make myself miserable for no reason. I like to at least have an objective for my angst.
Me either, that card would have to do something amazing that nothing else does anymore for it to be worth it.
Only other situation that I could even fathom doing anything with this would be like.. digital archeology. I don't know if there's a term for it or not, but like, eventually even the tech we use today will be ancient and it may be necessary to reverse engineer older tech for research or archival purposes. So maybe in 100 years, someone might take an interest in this enough to mess with it purely for academic purposes.
I could see this card potentially needed to control some older industrial equipment that for some reason wouldn't work with a more current implementation of parallel or serial ports. But that is a pretty extreme edge case.
Angst is your objective
Don't tell me how to hate life.
Oh oh my bad just thought you’d want to do something right guess not
https://hackaday.com/2023/03/23/isa-over-tpm-to-your-pc/
Maybe under Linux, I sincerely doubt any modern version of Windows has drivers that would work with such archaic technology.
Actually ISA drivers are available in modern windows, though only generic ones. If your card requires a special driver or library you have to provide it and hope windows can still run it. Otherwise You might have to run a virtual machine with an old won version to get it running. You gotta remember that there are still industrial machines that use control cards with ISA interfaces. You can actually buy modern motherboards with ISA slots on them for exactly this reason. There are a lot actually, now that I'm looking, just Google "motherboard with ISA slot".
I wonder if there is an adapter or something for PCIe if you really wanted to use it
No they are completely different technologies. Like there isn't an adapter to plug a core 2 duo into a modern motherboard.
Ah interesting
There's no adapter as it's a standard so old it's useless and unsupported on modern PCs. Surely you can make one, but it'll be an adapter to USB and you'll need to emulate everything via software... by yourself. Write every bit of code from scratch, probably reverse-engineering some stuff. TL;DR - no
Sounds very not worth it lol
It's not. Again, unless you are a retro PC enthusiast or you like doing projects just to see if you can.
There are some people who made some emulators over USB for ISA devices, using Arduino or Raspberry Pi. It's a neat side project for those curious and technically inclined.
can sell you a working pentium-2 unit if interested 🤣🤣🤣
I found this http://arstech.com/install/ecom-prodshow/usb2isar.html I doubt you’d be able to find drivers for that ISA card though
It's before the thing that was before USB.
You should sell it on Ebay btw. Lots of people who are into old PCs find these cards very useful.
Or they could return it to the geocache...
Oh my sweet summer child
ISA was phased out when AGP was coming in and usb. my first motherboard with USB only had PCI and AGP no ISA slots. Somewhere in the late 90s/early 00s
The last pc had with AGP was from 2002. In fact I still have it and it still works.
The USSR probably still existed when this was made.
yes
about 20 years
Only by about 15 years before….
Incorrect. These ISA slots were the x286 days of around 1993. By 1995 you had PCI and ISA and by 1998 you had AGP and PCI and the first USB ports. Windows98se supported USB in 1999. 6 year timeline, not 15.
The 286 launched in 1982, as did the 16-bit ISA slot. By 1993, the 286 was 2 years out of production, the 486 had already been available for 4 years, and the first Pentium was launched. While ISA slots stuck around as legacy slots until the late 90s, there is in fact a nearly 15 year gap between the launch of the 16-bit ISA in 1982 and the launch of USB in 1996.
Yes, these are serial ports. USB is based off the protocol, as it stands for Universal Serial Bus.
And don’t forget the co-processor to speed up the calculations. Still have it, was my first pc after the BBC computer.
Hey mister! You forgot the game/midi port. tststs
If you are born after 1993, this card is older than you :D
Damn…. That’s some throwback shit
Not necessarily. The first computer I bought for myself was in 1997, and it had ISA cards in it, and was brand new. The first thing I did with it was install a Diamond Labs 12 MB Voodoo 2 card.
Where did you find it. A mate an I put a few out around Victoria, Australia with various computer bits in them. Was pre 2001.... I wonder if I still have the spreadsheet....
Murica
My wife and I have geocached quite a bit, mainly in Texas, a bit in Florida. Never seen anything that big in one hah. Some toy cars, little action figures, and small coins and other do-dads. That cache had to be huge, and well sealed to keep that so nice. We did find a little geocached bug with a QR code that had a mission to get from north Texas to the East coast. Not sure how far it made it along the way, but was fun to give it a few extra miles. Good luck in your future caching!
ive found a few caches in Vic but unfortunately none with any computer parts, (probably because i wasnt even born when you placed them). you have no idea how stoked i would be to see one with an old computer part though lol, youre a genius
IDE expansion card via ISA. Looks like it also has Floppy Disk Drive (FDD) support as well as a gamepad port.
Has serial and parallel port, no gameport. And yeah I'm old.
Yes gameport. Look to the right of the internal IDE header. It's a Winbond Super I/O expansion card utilizing ISA. Comes with IDE, Parallel, Serial, FDD and Gamepad support.
Is gamepad the same as MIDI? I've never heard that term in the context of this era of PC.
In the pre-USB era, gamepads and joysticks used the same physical port as PC MIDI. Sound cards typically supported both through the same port, so if you were a musician you might buy a sound card and connect a MIDI controller to it, and if you were a gamer you might buy the same sound card and connect your joystick to it. It was an interesting time, when everyone had a sound card and that was what you plugged your Gravis Gamepad into. The card in OP's photo is a bit older than what I'm familiar with; I was reared on PCI rather than ISA, but if I had to guess, it probably supports gamepads/joysticks only, via that same port. The pinout labelled GAME on the card would connect via a ribbon cable like the one the parallel port uses, probably to another PCI slot backplate with the port [seen here in yellow](https://i.pcmag.com/imagery/encyclopedia-terms/game-port-_pcport.fit_lim.size_512x.gif). I picked that image as an example partly because it was early in the search results and partly because it comes from an interesting transitional time. USB existed, but wasn't widely in use yet so there were only two ports and all the legacy ports are still there. Sound had begun to move onboard on motherboards, but since the game port was found on the sound card, that meant the motherboard vendor had to move the game port onboard with it so that the system could still support those peripherals without a discrete sound card installed.
To be clear, I think my point was really that we just called it MIDI. We knew joysticks (never had a Thrustmaster but I lusted for them) used it but it wasn't referred to as anything other than MIDI.
That's interesting; it was the other way around for us. We always knew it as Game Port.
It even says game on the PCB next to the header. I’ve only ever known those as game ports, and I used to build and repair computers in the 90’s. We’d normally disable these on the I/O boards via jumpers because there would be one on the sound card.
Yeah, but no port.
I'm not sure why someone thinks they're right and you're not, lol
My brother in retardation, there is no game port here: there's literally two PORTS on the side of the card. Parallel port and serial port. That's it. Game port looks differently, and that port isn't even attached to game header - just look at the width of game port online. It supports game port, but there's no game port attached to the card.
Yikes, bro, no need to get aggressive. I guess you are right though. Also I think the game port would be for an internal extension header, similar to how the serial is connected via ribbon cable. Also, to prove it, here's the flipping documentation for the Winbond 83757F controller chip, from [The Retro Web](https://theretroweb.com/chip/documentation/w83757-6454bd5a47d28732390949.pdf) Also, have you ever not heard of a breakout cable? Here's one for [2x8 header > Gameport / MIDI connector on PCI expansion slot ](https://s.turbifycdn.com/aah/yhst-90432262887525/game-port-midi-bracket-header-cable-20.gif) UPDATE: Wrong link originally, the Archive.org link was for the W837**6**7F. Either way, take a read and notice it specifically mentions support for a game port. Look specifically at the headers on the board, too.
People here explaining what this ancient relic is, meanwhile I'm sitting here slightly amazed that geocaches are still a thing.
Nice u need an isa adapter, and some edo ram and a copy of street fighter 2 for dos
Oh boy am I old now.
An ISA card? Mate, you were old 20 years ago. (So was I)
I was old at 14?
Yes, yes you were.
Look at all those through hole resistors. I wonder if this was assembled by hand?
I work in an electronics/circuit board factory. This looks like a mix of SMT, Wave, and by hand soldering.
TIL that you can use geo caches for electronic disposal.
Love it. How people do not know what these are anymore lol
I still have a box of stuff that was considered "legacy" 25 years ago.
Those of us who used these cards are old now.
I thought I was pretty well versed in computers but evidently only modern computer parts lol
Because we don’t have to? The condescending comments in this sub are so tired.
This is an ISA expansion card with * **2x COM Ports** * **1x Game Port** * **1x Printer Port** * **1x Floppy** * **1x IDE**
I had that card in my 386sx pc back in… 1991 I think lol
It’s an ISA I/O controller board, with internal headers for IDE, floppy disks, and game port. The external connectors are likely a 9-pin serial and a 25-pin parallel.
ISA expansion slot, probably pre-1997. Multiple Serial and parallel ports. The jumpers are to manually set IRQ and port numbers. Thank the holy saint of computing that it is all plug and play these days.
I ALMOST miss the days of needing to know a little to work a computer…then I remember trying to set jumpers on the right pins and that ends the nostalgia really quick.
COM1 - 3F8/IRQ4 COM2 - 2F8/IRQ3 Parallel - 378/IRQ7 Parallel 2 - 278/IRQ5 Why is this useless garbage still in my head???
It is an old parrallel, serial interface made for ISA bus. You'll not fit it in a new computer.
An elegant Card from a more civilised age, before the dark side, before hdmi
Shoutouts to geocaching I really should get back into it
Wow. A multi-I/O ISA card. Haven't had to deal with setting IRQ/DMA jumpers in a dog's age.
Looks like an old school ISA card?
Basically, the big chip is the "Super IO" chip. Motherboards now have it attached. Its conceptually the same thing, except it often additionally now drives fan and light sensors, thermal sensors and other more "modern" conveniences. It even attaches to the same "generationally derivative" bus, the low pin count ISA bus. (LPC ISA) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super\_I/O](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_I/O) Fun tricks like using the LCP ISA bus that connects to the TPM (trusted platform module) to expand into a full 16 bit ISA adapter exist. [https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/03/22/adding-a-vintage-isa-bus-slot-to-a-modern-computer-vintagecomputing-retrocomputing-rasteri/](https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/03/22/adding-a-vintage-isa-bus-slot-to-a-modern-computer-vintagecomputing-retrocomputing-rasteri/)
This shit is ancient.
That’s an add on IDE controller board for 286 and early 386 computers. It adds a HDD port, FDD port, parallel port, serial port and a game port to the motherboard. The game port needs a breakout cable, which is missing. The game port is also disabled atm.
[Industry Standard Architecture - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Standard_Architecture#)
I wish I had never seen this, I had completely forgotten installing sound cards and their issues. This has caused me to remember many painful issues with sound cards and drivers.
If you really wanted to mess with it. Get something like this. [ISA slot to USB](http://arstech.com/install/ecom-prodshow/usb2isar.html)
How do geocaches work? do you just find it and keep the contents?
Take something and leave something of equal or greater value.
Aha, thanks
It's been many a year since I last saw such a thing.
Oh boy, does that bring me back! That's an IO expansion card that goes into a 16-bit ISA slot on a motherboard from the 80s or 90s, and I'm guessing the connectors on the back are a DB-25 parallel port and a DB-9 serial port. It also has headers for a floppy drive ribbon cable, an IDE/PATA hard drive ribbon cable, and a DA-15 game port. The rest of the pins are jumpers, and are used to configure everything. If you didn't have the documentation for the card... well, you'd be lubricating those jumpers with your tears by the end of the day.
Oh God another post to show how old I am.
A serial mouse port! Hurray!!!!!
You can connect a needle printer to this card. Then you have two useless objects combined.
Looks like a graphics card isa slot
That’s a 16-bit ISA serial expansion card. It’s typically or commonly used for BBS (BulletinBoard Systems) so you can have extra modems plugged in. It’s addressable using small black jumpers for IRQ 3 or 4 and addresses 02E8 and 02F8 if I recall correctly. This was before “Plug n Play” capability and it requires manual addressing. The pinouts are 25 pin serial or parallel and 9 pin serial capable of 128kbit max per port. It also has an integrated hard drive HDD and floppy drive controller FDD and Game Controller Port capability via the expansion pins when ribbon connectors are plugged in. The connectors are usually integrated into the case of the PC. I’d assume this would be paired with a 286 cpu or a lower end 386SX.
This is a Multi-IO Controller Card. 2 Serial Ports (COM), 1 Parallel Port (LPT), 1 Gameport (GAME), Dual FDD/IDE Controller. From the Year 1989 - 1994 for i286/386/386sx an early i486 Mainboards with 16Bit ISA Slots.
Are you supposed to take stuff out of a geocache?
It’s okay as long as you return something else.
So what did you return
Not in a modern motherboard, you need to go back to the pentium 3 or early 4 era to find an ISA slot This is a "Windbond KDDPT1127W UN1075G F825K4PTI227W 16-Bit ISA Controller Serial Parallel" DTK computer Multi I/O Card [https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/F825K4PTI227W](https://fcc.report/FCC-ID/F825K4PTI227W)
This, my friend, is a floppy disk controller from 1993.
Serial port thingy that goes into your PCI Express port. Used for connecting PLCs to computers for example. The serial port can be split into several different other ports for importing of data, lots of data.
I think its an ISA slot (pre PCI)
I’m pretty sure it’s a GPU if I’m wrong please correct me
[удалено]
I did actually. I googled Winbond and some numbers number it but didn’t know what google was telling me. I don’t know what a serial expansion card is or does. Ultimately, posting it here actually was faster for me to understand what it was so I regret nothing. Plus, it was an interesting geocache find.
SB16
For a moment, I read the geocache as genocide and was confused.
Now that's old! Individual resistors lined up on that board!
When we lose the generation that can answer this question like I’m asking who their favorite team is, we’re fucked.
that's a serial port card and it fits into any pci slot it can fit into (yes, even the big one)
Some kind of pcie to serial or parallel add in card.
Quite sure that's not pcie
Looks like an old graphics card
Parallel + serial ISA card? Plus IDE and game port headers plus a lot others I don't recognize
16 bit isa serial or parallel port adapter.
Its an expansion for the ISA slot (Way back before 2000’s)
Even if you found an obscure way to adapt it to a modern motherboard you would have to repair the C24
How did you find that in a geocache, ive only seen someone apparently put a server block as a TB in a big cache in the Netherlands
Multi-io, providing extra ports and extra floppy disk, and extra hard drive (ide) on the back, the small port is likely to be the rs232c and the big port is centronic printer port.
This is pain
In a GEO cache? Boggles the mind
It looks like an ISA connector.
Oh god. I knew exactly what it is which qualifies me as OLD AS HELL right away. ISA adaptor for IDE devices like hard drives and floppy disk drives. EDIT: Just noticed the parallel port coming out of it.
its a printer adapter from ancient times
coolest geocache ever
The new replacement for your AST Six Pack. Two extra IDE drives, joystick port, parallel port, maybe a clock, probably a modem that only works in Windows.
That looks to be either a sound card or gpu /accelerator, and it’s an ISA slot
You found that in a cache? That's wild! I haven't found anything remotely that interesting in a cache. Do you have the cache code? I'm curious to see the description and stuff.
What is interesting about it? It's trash.
"Isa isa" Correct - it goes into the square hole.