Re: ISA card slot for VIC-20

[Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca>]

On Fri, 15 Feb 2013, BLuRry wrote:

> No, it's not apple related but it begs the question: What would it take to build a similar ISA interface for the // bus?  I like the NMI solution he details -- a very nice build!
>
> http://mycorner.no-ip.org/6502/vic20/isa/index.html
> http://mycorner.no-ip.org/6502/vic20/network/index.html
Pete Stark once had a multi-part series in Radio Electronics about a 6800 
computer you could build that had an ISA bus built in, one way to get some 
of the peripherals that were common to the "IBM PC" world.

Some ISA boards probably could be interfaced to the Apple II bus just by 
translating the bus lines to the right place.  The simpler they are, the 
easier they'd be.

Some of the problem is that even once you get the bus signals right, one 
has to deal with exotic hardware.  A parallel or serial board would be 
relatively easy to interface software wise, but something more obscure, 
there might not be enough information about the hardware, the same thing 
happens today when trying to get Linux to run with the latest hardware.

On the other hand, my first 2400baud modem, in 1995, was an ISA bus 
2400baud modem, that I converted to a serial modem.  That was the era of 
less integration, so the UART on the board was actually standalone, rather 
than embedded in some IC doing other things.  So I just unsoldered the 
UART, wired in some RS-232 drivers and receivers, and then the rest of the 
modem board became a serial modem.  I was using a Mac Plus at the time so 
there was no way I could use a bus based modem, but it worked fine until I 
found a used USR Robotics external 2400baud modem to replace it.

  Michael