From af4@ukc.ac.uk  Ukn Jul  6 22:41:55 1993
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Date: Wed, 07 Jul 93 03:25:14 +0100
From: af4@ukc.ac.uk
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Subject: IDE, floppies, serial & stuff
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We appear to be homing in on the idea of implementing an ISA bus, albeit
with the tricky bits chopped off. If we go along with this, might I suggest
we use one of those cheapo IDE multi-I/O cards for the floppy controller,
IDE hard disk controller, parallel port and additional serial ports? I'm
suggesting that we include this as a standard extra, bundled with the 
motherboard. I'm sure this would keep the IDE people amongst us happy, and
would be cheaper than designing our own. An IDE multi-I/O card costs about
10 UK pounds ($15 US) over here, and all of the connectors alone would cost
around 20 UK pounds! We could probably get them a few cents cheaper too, if
we're ordering a batch of 100 or so.

Andy.


 
From tim@ubitrex.mb.ca  Ukn Jul  7 12:36:10 1993
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Date: Wed, 7 Jul 93 11:33:21 CDT
From: tim@ubitrex.mb.ca (Tim Braun)
Message-Id: <9307071633.AA22617@ubitrex.mb.ca>
To: riscy@pyramid.com
Subject: Re: IDE, floppies, serial & stuff
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> From: af4@ukc.ac.uk
 
> We appear to be homing in on the idea of implementing an ISA bus, albeit
> with the tricky bits chopped off. If we go along with this, might I suggest
> we use one of those cheapo IDE multi-I/O cards for the floppy controller,
> IDE hard disk controller, parallel port and additional serial ports?
  . . .
> Andy.

I'd really like a system that needed no ISA cards to work.  Including
floppy and two serial ports.  The cost of the ISA card connector shouldn't
be neglected in comparing multi i/o cards to m/board implementations of
a "super i/o" chip.

We may find price parity between m/board and ISA versions of a multi i/o
capability (FDC/2Ser/1EnhancedParallel/IDE).  Most of the connectors can
be (as they are on a multi i/o card) cheap 0.1" headers.  No IRQ/Address
jumpers to set (screw) up.  No ISA bus speeds to add wait states on each
i/o access.  No need to handle multiple IRQ's from a single card in the
SubISA implementation (this is not likely significant).

I actually don't care about IDE as much as serials and FDC.
________________________________________________________________
Tim Braun                          |
Ubitrex Corporation                | Voice: 204-942-2992 ext 228
1900-155 Carlton St                | FAX:   204-942-3001
Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada R3C 3H8 | Email: tim@ubitrex.mb.ca

 
