Can someone tell me about these PCIe looking cards?
Posted by Anontechyseller@reddit | vintagecomputing | View on Reddit | 57 comments
From my understanding, these seem to be old cards for communication (since nr. 2 and nr. 3 has telephone inputs) And some for video output. Though nr. 3. Has some weird port, that blue input thing.
If you would’ve seen my other post in here, there was also an old ESDI half height drive, and it looks like these PCI cards come from the same PC/Server.
I’m overall just looking for an explanation on what era these were in, and what ran them. Also if you could answer what type of connections they use, they look abnormally longer than a normal PCIe slot.
(PS. nr. 1 doesn’t have an output on the other end, it’s just blank)
agehall@reddit
First one seems to be a Promise IDE controller with cache. Awesome card - had one back in the day with 16MB of cache on it and that made things fly before SSDs.
suffestuffie@reddit
2: Spartan modem 2400bps.
https://ebay.us/m/fWIiJt
suffestuffie@reddit
https://ebay.us/m/eMlKLL
Trimus2005@reddit
These are telephone cards if i'm not mistaken
And if i'm not mistaken they're for dial up?
dst1980@reddit
1: VL-Bus (VLB) caching IDE/FDD controller 2: ISA modem. Based on FCC ID, I would guess 9600 baud. 3: ISA modem with port for something else - likely bus mouse. 4: ISA VGA. Looks like 1MB of VRAM. 5: ISA multi-IO. 1 serial and one parallel port on board and a header for a second serial port.
VLB was a 32-bit extension to ISA. It was mostly on 486 and early Pentium boards. It was one of the four 32-bit expansion slot options for PC compatibles. The options: 1. VLB 2. EISA 3. MCA 4. PCI
1 and 2 were backwards compatible to ISA. MCA was IBM proprietary, and had 16 and 32 bit options. EISA used a contact layout like AGP, with the upper set of contacts matching ISA and the lower set not connected when an ISA card was inserted. PCI survived because it avoided key flaws from the other 3: 1. VLB - massive card edge, VLB portion ran at CPU FSB speed, required direct path to CPU 2. EISA - could not support hot plug, insertion had to be complete or motherboard and/or card could be fried, settings for cards stored in special battery-backed RAM 3. MCA - IBM license fees, settings for cards stored in special battery-backed RAM
justeUnMec@reddit
It's ISA. 1 is a RAID controller, ISA with added Vesa Local bus. 2 and 3 are MODEMs with phone pass through. 4 is a VGA card. 5 is serial/parallel.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Thanks! Where do you reckon i could buy one of those ISA ports? Or is it a whole motherboard i need to buy?
roirraWedorehT@reddit
The motherboard would have to have one or more ISA slots, unless there's a chance there used to be some probably now very rare adapter to use ISA cards in a PCI (not PCIe) slot.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Oh really? I’d be looking into that. Currently i’m looking for motherboards with ISA slots, but your idea sounds a little bit more easy. Thanks.
bnelson333@reddit
not to be rude, but if you don't know that these are ISA, you're not going to be able to get them working. especially because why? modems have no infrastructure left. even if you had a landline, there's nobody to call anymore because there's no modems out there listening for it. they're complete garbage now. the I/O card? Do you have an old parrallel printer you're trying to use or a serial mouse? Chances are if you found an ISA compatible motherboard, it'd have PS/2 or USB anyway, rendering this card pretty much useless. The RAID card maybe I guess, but it's so old it's not practical. It's VLB, it's meant for like a 486. Again, if you get an ISA capable motherboard it's probably going to have a faster IDE controller built in. Or if you really wanted performance you could go SCSCI or CF or even IDE to SATA, which is going to be a million times faster than that RAID card you have. I'm all for tinkering with old tech, but some old tech just isn't worth it
Im_100percent_human@reddit
There are a handful of BBSes that run landline, but I think they are accessible over internet too. I have never had a motherboard with ISA slots AND USB. By the time USB came, ISA was pretty much gone. There may be some out there, but they were rare. When USB because popular, the add-on adapters you could easily get for your computer were PCI.
ReplacementOk1029@reddit
I have had multiple boards with USB and ISA. I believe the boards had USB 1.0. Also, there are boards either USB 2.0, Pentium 4 era, that have ISA but they use a bridge chip like some of the decade old boards with PCI slots using bridge chips.
dst1980@reddit
I know (have) a P4 era board with ISA and USB2. Epox 8KTA3+ Pro - AMD Socket A, 1x ISA, PCI, and AGP.
InsaneGuyReggie@reddit
Any motherboard with ISA slots is going to be from the 90s or before. Won’t run modern stuff but would run old stuff
roirraWedorehT@reddit
There's always a chance, but even if it should work, no idea on how well it would work. It will probably be easier with the motherboard route.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Hmm yeah.. Saw another redditor say, it can cause problems with recognition with OS and hardware.
Prestigious-Age-2044@reddit
You can buy these 8-bit ISA adapters off of Aliexpress for more or less 50€, no DMA support obviously though
justeUnMec@reddit
ISA isn't really a port - it's a card connector for the system bus, common on AT boards in the 80s and 90s. VLB was a faster bus extension that had a brief period of popularity pre-PCI in the 90s. So you'd need a board that supported that.
Also, for completeness, there were a few non-x86 architectures that supported ISA to a greater of lesser extent, like some Amigas and the BeBox but finding drivers for random cards would likely be a pain.
Maeglin75@reddit
The Amigas only support ISA with a x86 bridge board installed. Basically a complete PC on an expansion card. The Amiga system itself wasn't able to access ISA cards.
WoomyUnitedToday@reddit
It's an entire motherboard or in some cases an entire computer you'd need to support it
Anything from an IBM 5150 to 386 and some 486 boards will pretty much be only ISA, then 486 and Pentium will generally be combo PCI and ISA, then Pentium 2 and 3 and maybe you'll get like 1 or 2 ISA slots if you're lucky
There's no reason to buy an entire motherboard just to use these cards, you can easily get PCI equivalents to all of these for like $2 each, and they'll be much faster.
Only real reason to use ISA cards over PCI in a system that has PCI would be for sound cards in DOS, or if for some reason you NEED a Pentium 3 system with a CGA card for who knows what reason.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Yeah, saw another redditor say you can buy adapters. Currently i’m just looking around for the best option.
I mean it’s not because i refer ISA over PCI, i just thought itd be a cool project to get em up and running.
rosmaniac@reddit
The VLB caching IDE controller is interesting, but you'll need a VLB motherboard, which effectively means a 486 of some sort. While there were a few early Pentium boards with VLB it was suboptimal, since VLB is essentially the 486's Local Bus (that is the L and B in VLB, after all), and the Pentium bus is rather different in operation.
VLB and PCI came out within a few months of each other in 1992, but PCI, being a mezzanine bus, was more easily supported on Pentium and the VLB died with the obsolescence of the 486 for mainstream systems. There were a few combo VLB/PCI 486 boards, such as the Chicony pictured at https://www.retropcstore.com/product/chicony-tk8880f-2066a2-socket-3-motherboard-486-pci-vlb-isa-edo-ram/ , but they tended to have lesser PCI performance (although there are many vogons threads that will contest that) while those that featured either PCI or VLB were pretty solid.
This was right around the beginning of the 'fake cache' phenomenon; if you want to go down a twisty rabbit hole that's an interesting one. I still have a few fake cache boards, where there are a bunch of traces that go nowhere next to chips that are labelled 'write back cache.'
steak4take@reddit
It’s not that interesting. I had one back in the day with my DX2-66 and later a DX4-100. It was an OEM Adaptec controller. It made loading faster in many cases but certain games were either slower or not fully compatible.
OldschoolSysadmin@reddit
Why do you want to use these with a modern computer? Get a 386 or 486 board to go with.
CobraG0318@reddit
I know there's PCIe to pci adapters, and I remember there being a PCI to isa adapters. So in theory, you could stack them, but it'd be hella jank, and that's if you could even get the PCI to isa adapters anymore. And it'd still need to get recognized by your mobo and os, which is a shot in the dark. It's not worth it in the least, unless you're some quirky retro computing YouTuber. So, get a motherboard. If you're trying to build a system around what you have on hand, there's some early pentiums that still used vlb. You can max the system out, and drop an overdrive chip of some sort in the CPU socket and tune the cmos setting for some fun. Though if you really want retro appeal, you can find high end 386 boards with vlb.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Yeah.. Now im stuck between choices: Really janky setup, or buy a new motherboard with ISA slots. Though i think it would be more expensive the mobo choice (including CPU, Cooler etc etc) I’d still think it would be worth the money.. somehow.
rosmaniac@reddit
Relatively modern new production motherboards are available with ISA slots today for industrial applications, which tend to be the one area where there are still specialized ISA interface cards, but be prepared for extreme sticker shock. Here's one on eBay, featuring a socket LGA775 that can support up to a Core2Duo CPU:
https://ebay.us/m/2OLltj
There are significant limitations with this sort of ISA support, because it's actually a variant of the LPC bus, but brought out to ISA slots. The last high quality full ISA support I know of is again in an industrial platform running LGA775 but capped at Pentium 4 CPUs; my day job has three of these: https://ebay.us/m/RuSq6k on PICMIG combo PCI/ISA backplanes, and the ISA support is the best you'll find post Pentium III, the last Intel chip set platform with full ISA support.
The regular old PATA/IDE drive connector actually is ISA if the PIO transfer modes are used; UltraDMA modes not so much.
CobraG0318@reddit
I don't see any usefulness in the janky adapter stacking, and a whole lotta risks. Def not worth it, unless you got time and money to burn, and a good viewer base for something that prob won't work, and will possibly break something.
sovietlovehammer112@reddit
You'd need to buy a motherboard with an ISA slot already on it.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Figured. I’m looking for boards right now that have them. Spoiler alert: theres not many.
486Junkie@reddit
Well, the first one can take up to 4 hard drives and 4 floppy drives. I have a similar card in my hybrid system (3/486 VLB board) and it's the best card in the world hands down.
refuge9@reddit
1 is a VLB (VESA local Bus) Promise Technology Caching Drive controller card. This is one of the best vintage 386/486 era controller cards of the era. It can’t do LBA drives stock, but there’s someone out there that has a firmware update they’ll flash to the EEPROM if you pay them and send them the firmware chip. I’ve been trying to find one of these again for years.
2 and #3 are both 8 bit ISA modems, probably 2400 bad if I had to guess.
4 is a 16 bit ISA VGA card driven by an NCR chip. Nothing terribly fancy.
5 is an 8 bit parallel and serial port add-on card. Just adds a single 25 pin parallel port and a 9 pin serial COM port.
Most of this is just meh stuff, but that promise tech controller, if it’s working, is gold.
486Junkie@reddit
I have a similar VLB cache drive controller card. I have an Epson SD-800 and a Mitsubishi 360K floppy drive connected to the card (using separate FDD cables) and man, it's amazing. I did the ROM upgrade that allows LBA drives and no issues at all. It's currently in my 3/486 hybrid system (Jetway OPTi 495-SX 3/486 WB) with an ET4000/w32p VLB card and I'm happy.
Distribution-Radiant@reddit
These are not PCIe. Or PCI. They're ISA.
That "blue input thing" in #3 is a row of DIP switches. That's how you set the IRQ and other settings on 90s hardware if there aren't jumpers. Appears to be a modem, so generally useless today unless you have POTS (plain old telephone service).
These are all ISA. The longest one is ISA + VESA. The itty bitty one (#5) is a later combo serial/parallel card.
dlarge6510@reddit
These are ISA cards.
Not PCI, that came out after ISA.
Is a raid controller. It has an ISA 16 bit connector and there is a VESA Local Bus (VLB) connection at the back. VLB essentially became PCI.
Is an 8Bit ISA modem.
Is a 8 bit ISA modem with a DIN connection.
Is a 16 bit ISA VGA card
Is a 8 bit I/O card with a serial port and parallel port.
486Junkie@reddit
Uh, RAID didn't exist on VLB cards unless it's SCSI. It's a Promise DC 4030VL2 that's a cache controller card that supports 4 IDE drives and 4 floppy drives (I have one in my system and it's a good piece of history).
Accomplished-Camp193@reddit
None of these are PCIe, and not even remotely PCIe looking. Either you are so ridiculously young or I'm too old, you make me feel uncomfortable.
#1 is a (most likely) Promise DC4030VLB ISA VLB IDE controller, it has slots for 30-pin SIMM modules to be used as cache.
#2 and #3 are ISA modem cards, as boring as they get.
#4 is an ISA VGA card with an NCR 77C22-E graphics chip. Video RAM is usually 1MB, and the card is not capable of 3D.
#5 is a Goldstar GM82C455 Serial and Parallel ISA card.
RadishAggravating491@reddit
I was taken a back a little bit to see a controller using VESA bus slot, I figured that was always for “high end” video cards.
Distribution-Radiant@reddit
Nope, was common with HDD controllers too. That's a pretty high end HDD controller too.
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Young? Sure get that a lot.. But yes i am ridiculously younger than the majority of r/vintagecomputing 😂
486Junkie@reddit
VLB card is a Promise DC-4030VL. Quad IDE, Quad FDD, cache controller card (I have one in my 386 machine that has VLB slots (Jetway OPTi 495SX/WB board) and it's the best thing ever).
Unhappy-Idea-1956@reddit
My dude is going to love setting IRQs
PublicAd4857@reddit
And DMA, high & low :)
GGigabiteM@reddit
Ignore people saying "you can use PCIe to xyz adapters" No, you can't. There is no such adapter that supports DMA or legacy interrupts and ports properly. No modern operating system supports any of that hardware, you will need a period correct motherboard with a period correct operating system.
The longest card is a VLB disk controller, and you have a few serial and modem cards, with one VGA video card.
If you want a single motherboard that can support all of those cards, you'll need a very late 386 or an early 486 motherboard that doesn't have any integrated peripherals on it, and has VLB slots. Those are getting kind of scarce and expensive these days, and you always have to watch out for battery bombed boards that scammers are trying to pass off for too much money.
There are also some hybrid boards in the very end of the 386 era that used either the Cyrix 486SLC/DLC or the IBM 486SLC/DLC, which are much faster than a 386, but slower than a 486. Cyrix and IBM basically took the 386SX bus and slapped a 486 core on it for the SLC parts. These had a 16 bit bus and 24 bit address bus, so they were pretty limited. The DLC parts used a full 32 bit 386 bus, and were much faster, often encroaching into real 486 territory if you had L2 cache.
The serial and modem cards aren't going to be too interesting unless you still have a POTS line to plug into. Modern VOIP lines won't work with old modems because the compression they use on the audio stream corrupts the tones that the modem uses to communicate with. You can sometimes get really low baud rates to work if you're able to get into the configuration page of the VOIP box, but most VOIP providers generally don't want you mucking around with that.
You can always go the caleb retro route and make your own ISP using a PBX to make your own phone network, but that's a lot of time and headache to go through just to make a crusty old modem to work.
InsaneGuyReggie@reddit
I had wondered if a modem would work over VoIP. Last time used one was about 2006, both for my local library’s card catalog and to remote into the managers’ computer at a restaurant where I worked (the latter I did just to do it, I was a manager but had no work to do from home).
InsaneGuyReggie@reddit
That hard drive you reference is actually MFM
SpecialistCompote993@reddit
Appear to be ISA instead of PCIe.
rncole@reddit
Damn I feel old.
AdeptnessPersonal156@reddit
Yup, exactly my feeling when I first read the post.
AdeptnessPersonal156@reddit
Yup, exactly my feeling when I first read the post.
compu85@reddit
Board one is a VLB IDE RAID controller. Board three is a combo modem / bus mouse card I think.
OpeningLetterhead343@reddit
better. it's a cache controller. Slap some simms in that shit and smartdrv can go away. But only if you don't have anything with a faster interface. Looks very similar to the one I got 2nd hand gifted in the mid 90s (with 4x512KB 30 pin simms). faster drive interfaces came along and rendered it obsolete.
siliconsandwich@reddit
This one doesn’t have LBA so very limited in drive sizes. Though there is an LBA-enabled ROM out there if you have a programmer!
Anontechyseller@reddit (OP)
Oh i have a stash of those simms. Just realized.
hamellr@reddit
Had one of these in my BBS. The user files, BBS software, and games were on one drive, the “warez” were on a second. And a third.
JollyQuiscalus@reddit
The blue thing is just a bank of dip switches for configuring the modem.
That_Amstrad_Chap@reddit
I believe they are ISA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industry_Standard_Architecture