OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Multimedia

[SBAWED2] Getting an old audio card working.

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Olafur Gunnlaugsson:

--- Quote from: Andi B. on September 21, 2018, 01:54:50 pm ---
--- Quote ---What has changed sine then is that Arca Noae has removed ISA support from their system...
--- End quote ---
What do you mean by that? What specifically was removed?

--- End quote ---

This may be a misunderstanding, Arca Noa rep stated clearly in their Warpstock talk that all support for ISA had been removed wholesale and that you should continue using eCS if you needed ISA support, however their FAQ says that all ISA drivers except audio drivers have been removed and their release statement says "ArcaOS does not provide extensive support for ISA or MicroChannel hardware", which is not a terribly clear statement.

It may simply have been poorly worded by the Arca Noa gent, and that they simply removed all ISA drivers from the distribution

I found it a bit odd because most systems still have an ISA bus hidden inside the chipset even if the physical bit went missing 15+ years ago, and it is used for connecting to "legacy" hardware such as health monitoring chips on modern motherboards.

Andi B.:
I think they only do not provide new/refreshed drivers for ISA cards and they do not spend time in supporting questions about. That makes sense to me cause if you're still using such ancient system with ISA cards you probably run an older version of OS/2 anyway. You need ArcaOS mainly for new hardware which requires ACPI and AHCI. Such systems do not provide ISA slots since many years.

AFAIK there is no OS driver needed to support ISA cards. So there is nothing to left out. You got the drivers for your old ISA card anyway when you bought them. And if the card ever worked with OS/2 on a specific system, I'm pretty sure it will do the same with ArcaOS.


--- Quote --- and it is used for connecting to "legacy" hardware such as health monitoring chips on modern motherboards.
--- End quote ---
I do not know a single health sensor which is connected via ISA. They are usually on the SMI (I²C) or integrated in some chipset. Managed by PCI registers or older ones by legacy port I/O. So you need a driver which knows the commands for the sensor and the I/O port where it is connected. But that's not ISA.

Olafur Gunnlaugsson:

--- Quote from: Andi B. on September 21, 2018, 03:04:53 pm ---I think they only do not provide new/refreshed drivers for ISA cards and they do not spend time in supporting questions about. That makes sense to me cause if you're still using such ancient system with ISA cards you probably run an older version of OS/2 anyway. You need ArcaOS mainly for new hardware which requires ACPI and AHCI. Such systems do not provide ISA slots since many years.

--- End quote ---

That is true of personal computers but industrial systems still use ISA, and motherboards and systems with ISA busses are still being sold. If the original statement by Arca Noa was incorrect, that is somewhat annoying because that is the main reason I put off buying the system and sticking to eCS ....

Olafur Gunnlaugsson:

--- Quote from: Andi B. on September 21, 2018, 03:04:53 pm ---
--- Quote --- and it is used for connecting to "legacy" hardware such as health monitoring chips on modern motherboards.
--- End quote ---
I do not know a single health sensor which is connected via ISA. They are usually on the SMI (I²C) or integrated in some chipset. Managed by PCI registers or older ones by legacy port I/O. So you need a driver which knows the commands for the sensor and the I/O port where it is connected. But that's not ISA.

--- End quote ---

Legacy port I/O sits on top of ISA, it may look to you in some cases as something else from a programming point of view but if you have a legacy chip on the motherboard, and since they are cheaper than PCI/PCIe serial chips that is quite likely if your system has an optional serial port or header for instance, you literally have an ISA bus on the system.

lss73912:
... I'm not sure about this ArcaOS removing support for ISA as if so, why do ISA audio drivers (SB16, AWE, ESS, etc.) continue to exist in the installation media?

The ISA audio drivers might be relatively outdated, though. I found a v1.2 and a v1.9REXX packages for SB16/AWE on Hobbes in the meantime, so I might consider trying these out... as I'm not really sure which version ArcaOS is carrying. The audio card is mainly meant for DOS stuffs, though I probably will have to rely it on ArcaOS for now as X-Fi is not supported yet (only up to Audigy).

And regarding ISA bus... yes, you can have fully functional slots with southbridges up to ICH5 (that'll be up to i865). Industrial motherboards with ISA slots exist, although you won't get ISA DMA with anything later than ICH5 according to this document.

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