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End of an Era for the ISA Bus

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What is a PC? Certainly the specification for PCs has changed almost entirely since the earliest examples. Another element of the original PC architecture was finally consigned to the dust this month with the announcement tucked away on the WHDC site that support for the ISA bus would be discontinued in future releases of Windows beyond Windows Vista. So I guess it's time to consider upgrading my old IBM PS/2!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005
    Didn't the PS/2 use MCA bus?
  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005
    Actually, the most basic models of the PS/2 had an ISA bus, if I remember rightly - only the later models switched to MCA. But I'm bluffing anyway, of course - hopefully the PS/2 I once used has long ago been consigned to the big blue elephant graveyard.
  • Anonymous
    October 24, 2005

    Are you people out of your minds, why on earth has support for ISA not been dropped already? I have not seen a new computer with ISA for about 6-8 years now.

    How much of this new Vista code is legacy code like this? How do you even TEST it?

  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2005
    "How much of this new Vista code is legacy code like this? How do you even TEST it? "

    Have you seen SLOC figures for Windows? Windows NT was something like 4M LOC, Windows XP close to 50. Just based on that, my hunch is that legacy hardware support is a relatively small (but sometimes annoying) backwater in the source tree.
  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2005
    there's a small but non-zero population of machines in the "semi-embedded" realm running XP (XP embedded, the modular version) and chugging along with ISA busses interfaced to...well, everything.

    though I'm not sad to see it go, the ISA bus was at least a robust, easy-to-work-with design on the hardware side. it achieved that by neglecting software support (be sure to set your DIP switches to match the IRQ and address expected by your drivers!), but it's great for the embedded world.
  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2005
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    October 28, 2005
    @ exportgoldman:

    One of my dual processor systems was built in late 2000/early 2001, and it had an ISA slot on the motherboard (which actually went to use with an older modem!).. but I imagine by the time Windows Vista + 1 ships the spec's required probably won't even cover anything that could have had an ISA slot to begin with.

    On the other hand, the beta of Vista seems to run as well as Windows XP on the old Pentium III/ISA system.
  • Anonymous
    December 08, 2005
    You can still buy a brand new motherboard designed for a P4 with an ISA slot in it. Quite important in a number of areas like industrial control PC's. They are not hard to find though they are a specialist item now.

    In my area which is lab equipment shelling out say $80,000 for a new bit of lab equipment because the PC has broken down and the interface card is ISA is not funny. That is at the cheaper end of the scale as well. For some items it could easy be a seven figure sum.

    I guess Microsoft don't really understand this.
  • Anonymous
    January 25, 2006
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the Serial/Parallel and PS/2 Ports still use the ISA Bus to connect internally to the PCI to ISA Bridge?

    So technically, your Keyboard and Mouse (Unless USB) still need the ISA Bus?
  • Anonymous
    March 06, 2006
    I am currently looking to replace an old library system with a ISA card required to run database software. Like the above posters have stated, in Enterprise, it is NO joke. Dell, Gateway, Hp and Lenovo (IBM) no longer ship anything with ISA, so we are going to have to piece something together. But we will NOT shell out tens or G's for the newest system ver. when our current one functions just fine, save a failing MB.

    ISA will be around for a LONG time to come.

    heybiff