Ok, Ive been thinking about trying the ISA interface card under winXP, so i changed the settings for the data port on the card (SWx switches) accordingly to reflect the system ones. But nothing. The Partner N software package doesnt recognize the cart, even in compatibility mode.. perhaps im missing some configuration steps for the isa interface (obviously windows related). Any ideas?
As in you mean i should install win98se on a virtual machine and use it from there? Im not sure it would work, considering the fact that it doesnt in winxp. The problem is actually in the cart access by the client software. Its a non plug and play card. I tried mapping the ports differently, both on the cart as in windows. In windows it resets them at each start (sigh) and the mappings on the cart just dont seem to change anything.
I'm pretty sure you can't connect custom ISA (or PCI) card inside a VM. At least not in vmware workstation at least. Only hardware you can connect direcly to a vm is USB device. All other device use "interface driver" from vmware to use your real hardware. (or use the hardware direcly for some specific device) I don't know if other virtualization product (or other vmware soft) could let you connect isa/pci direcly to your VM. It could work is those isa card are sumulating a more standard device, like scsi card. Them I think you could easily use a VM with win98se under winXP.
Just found that: ISA to USB 2.0 http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-card-usb2isa.html With that you could use your ISA card on a modern computer and plug-it directly to your win98se VM since it's a usb device.
I know that those cards have been up on discussion before, but have any ever tried them and confirmed that they work with Partner ISA card and PSX ISA dev cards? Been interested in getting something like this but don't feel like throwing out the money if it in the end wont work. http://www.arstech.com/item-USB-2-0-to-ISA-card-3-connectors-usb2isax3.html The other problem is obviously that some of this old software won't work well under WinXP.
I know about those cards, but im not too confident because I dont feel too confident iin trying them on a card I know it will take ten years to get another example of. Of course, I havent taken the time to try my old sound card on them (myth SB 16 ). As babu says, im not too much into throwing 150 $ + shipping in a thing that is not even 100% sure to work. Also, considering there is a USB layer between it, I doubt real time activity would work as good as it does normally. I think the only way is a) r-e the driver (sigh) b) get a pci card (sigh*sigh) Ideas?
ISA2USB will just be wasted money, virtual machines will be wasted time... It doesn't matter if you have an ISA card or PCI card, old apps need PORT ACCESS. Get a kernel mode port driver program, duh :-(
Good guess! But do those exist for ISA cards as well? The problem is not the address range, but the interrupt - I still didnt manage to find out which one the cart uses..
You don't need them for ISA cards, port memory is all the same, just find where the card is decoded and enable it in the driver. Interrupt?? On the Partner cart or ISA card? Knowing the Partner's interrupt is irrelevant to getting the PC card working and finding the IRQ on the ISA card is as easy as looking at the PCB! Why would the PC card even need an interrupt? If for whatever reason it does use an interrupt you WON'T be able to get IRQ to work in XP, unless Intelligent Systems decided to make an old NT4 driver and by luck it still works. Otherwise you'd have to impossibly write your own kernel mode driver and hack in support to the IS programs...
Ipse dixit. Just finished tracing the whole pinout of the card down, take a look : http://www.yntproject.net/docs/N64/partner/IFCARD(ISA).txt A port driver you say eh? The cart has "wired" 5 different interrupts, one of which is the IRQ 13, but that is mapped to the Math coprocessor (the pc is a PIII) and I cant seem to be able to remap it (at least for what I have checked up to now). This is getting intresting. Let's see if I can get further on following the port mapper road. Any more suggestion calpis? EDIT : tried porttalk, no success.
Tracing the pinout of the card?? It's a plain 16-bit ISA card! Just because the pins are there doesn't mean they're used, I mean look at all the address lines... BTW, all of those IRQs are available because you CHOOSE which you want to use, same with the address decoding. Can you find out where the card is decoded and where the IRQs go? For the decoding it'll be either a discrete comparator or the FPGA with jumpers, then you'll know where it's mapped... How do you configure the card in the controlling software? If it uses IRQ it will let you configure it unless there's a driver for the card which I doubt. If somehow that isn't the case and you can't figure it out from the hardware, you can try debugging the control software and watch for access to the interrupt vector table. Really though, why would the card need IRQ for communication? It doesn't make much sense.
Ha. Please you tell me I've installed win98Se, was supposed to put it together with winxp in dual boot, but nah the win98se installation messed up the winxp one, so I just decided to take it away. I am going to reinstall the winxp over win98, and then we can talk on. As for the card setup, it has three swiches which are used to map the card into ISA address space. By default, they are fixed at 320H. I never had to setup IRQs or the like with it, just needed to be sure that the port address was mapped correctly in the configuration files as well. Really, I tried with porttalk but it just gaved me the same errors. If there are 5 wired IRQ lines present, well this means that for something they have to be used. I'll try to trace them back later today.
Have you considered just buying an older computer from the '90s to be your N64 dev machine, setting it up with DOS/Win9x, and running the card on that? I'm pretty sure it would be cheaper and easier than finding a PCI Partner-N card.
Then it probably doesn't use IRQs if there isn't an obvious place to set it. IRQs have to be set the same as the port address. There's no magical way for it to hijack all interrupts and determine the source. How do you know PortTalk is working? Try Direct I/O, years ago I had some success using it. It doesn't mean they have to be used, it means they are AVAILABLE for use, again look at all the address lines, over half of them CAN'T be used no matter what for ports, but they are still there in case they wanted to map stuff into the memory address space which I presume they didn't.
Have you try to reserve IRQ and DMA from the BIOS ? If these cards are non pnp you must setup an IRQ and maybe a DMA.
