What was your favorite ISA card?

[RichL]

I'm split between the 3Com 3c509 (still got 2 in daily use) and my old AWE32 card. Took a lot of fiddling with soundfonts to get my SBLive to sound as good as the midi samples on the AWE32.

[Dr Mordrid]

SB AWE-64.

Dr. Mordrid

[Dogbert]

Sorry, never loved ANY of my ISA cards. The first hardware stuff that I liked were VESA (which I never owned) and PCI (My 2mb [M]atrox millienium which I still have).

[William]

I hate (and boy do I mean hate) a certain ISA NIDAQ card. Still in use sadly.

[THE_Editor]

The ISA Epson scanner card in my machine (CuBx-E).

The scanner (GT5000) is no longer supported under Win2KPro but its been such a little gem that I slide mounted the boot drive, Using 98 on the other drive so I can still use it and those old proggies that dont like Win2K.

[VJ]

Most likely my AWE32 (one of the very first batches, it had the 3 proprietary CD-contollers - Sony, Mitsumi and Panasonic and 2 SIMM-slots). Some friends of mine that also had an AWE32 needed to remove their PC-speaker from its normal location in order to make room to seat this card
(it still is in use today, but showing its age)

Apart from that, I still have some 3com 3C509 combo-network cards (video and IDE was VESA and later PCI)


Jörg

[bsdgeek]

Triden... wait that was trash.

SB AWE-32.

[Fred H]

SB 16 was my old trusty ISA audio card, following me on 2-3 computer upgrades.
I was crying when my new MB didn’t supported ISA.
But now, I am happy with a Santa Cruz and my daughter is happy with my old computer including the SB 16 ISA card.

Fred H

[DirtFarmer]

There are still days when I miss the Jumpered ISA cards. Not so many anymore though.

Favorite 8-bit ISA: US Robotics Sportster 33.6 modem
Favorite 16-bit ISA: SB AWE-32 with 2x1MB 30Pin Non Parity SIMMS The physical size of the board made it a bargain. RAM was about $50/MB back then, had to upgrade it later when people were using 1MB SIMMS for key chains

I do wish I had a GUS at some time, it was definately the coolest ISA sound card ever made.

[jackzod]

SB awe 64 by far

2nd would be my ATI vga wonder... (im really feeling old)

[rugger]

ISA, yuck

I'm with dogbert here,

I never really loved ANY of my old ISA cards. I suppose the best was a Tseng ET4000A ISA video card. It was the fastest non-accelerated ISA video card around. Followed closely by my old 28K V.Everything modem. Thats not saying much though.

I hated plug and play ESS ISA sound cards because they sound crappy and often the plug and pray broke.

I hated ISA network cards because they are hard to configure. (even the plug and pray ones sucked) My old 8-bit 3c503's stopped working on pentium and higher machines. (hardware problem, because it affected all operating systems) My even older D-link DE150's used to randomly stop working under win9x. (although the lantasctic software was quite good)

I hated most ISA video cards because they were really slow (Trident were the utter worst of them, Tseng were the best of them)

I am glad I don't deal with ISA anymore. I am glad I can put all my slow devices on USB, and all the fast ones onto PCI.

I do have nostogia though, just not for ISA.

[Claymonkey]

That was one of my main reasons for asking this question. Most, and I mean MOST, of my ISA experiences sucked. But I had some good ones, and I'm not alone. The bad helps put things in perspective. I am glad ISA is dead.

[RichL]

I'm with Wombat on that score.
The really cool thing about ISA was that you could change a few jumpers or flash the eprom and tell the card it WAS using IRQ x, DMA x and Memory address of X, rather than letting Windows screw around with PnP and try to put seven cards on the same IRQ, then decide that five of them wouldnt work and not let you change anything.

[Fogel]

It's my vISA card.

[The PIT]

Originally posted by RichL
I'm with Wombat on that score.
The really cool thing about ISA was that you could change a few jumpers or flash the eprom and tell the card it WAS using IRQ x, DMA x and Memory address of X, rather than letting Windows screw around with PnP and try to put seven cards on the same IRQ, then decide that five of them wouldnt work and not let you change anything.

Yes I remember cards like that. Good unless it didn't give you enougth irq's to place around with.