Another one for you Tech dudes

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Skanky Burns
Quick, everybody point and laugh!

You wouldn't believe the number of "obsolete" computers that are still in use. Running Windows 3.11, or MS-DOS 3.3 even.

[Skanky Burns]

I would. The 3rd computer in my room is a Tandy 1000.

But then, I never actually use it.

[Urban Ranger]

If you can find a working 5 1/4" diskette drive, you could make a pretty penny.

[Worthingtons]

What exactly is ISA for???

[Urban Ranger]

Very old expansion cards.

[Cruddy]

ISA is not truly plug and play (although Win98 onwards will make a decent try at this). It is limited in bandwidth terms, which means graphics cards haven't used it since PCI came in during the 90s. PCI was itself beaten by AGP soon after, although PCI cards are still made because not every board has an AGP slot.

But ISA is still useful. It can certainly meet the small demands of telephone modem cards. ISA sound cards can sound just as good as PCI ones - you won't get 4 channels usually, but not evertybody has the sound system to make use of that.

It can even be used for slow network cards (10Mb per second) and even SCSI-2, although it won't work as well as PCI equivalents in these areas, due to the speed restrictions.

I use it for the latter 2 methods - 1 card per machine. Putting 2 ISA cards onto the same board can make it a lot trickier to set up.