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CPCISA

2,237 bytes added, 08:19, 10 September 2022
Created page with "[[Category:Peripherals]] [[Image:Cpcisa2b.jpg|200px|thumb|Prototype of the CPCISA card]] === What it is === CPCISA is a project created by [[Siou]], also hosted/worked on at..."
[[Category:Peripherals]]
[[Image:Cpcisa2b.jpg|200px|thumb|Prototype of the CPCISA card]]

=== What it is ===

CPCISA is a project created by [[Siou]], also hosted/worked on at [[Yarek]].

Basically, it is a hardware add-on that lets you connect ISA cards to your old CPC! Some examples of what it can offer:
*An I/O interface (Serial and parallel ports, Floppy and IDE ports)
*An internal (card) modem (probably a full-featured modem is needed; that is, not a winmodem/softmodem)
*A SoundBlaster card (or 100% compatible)
*A network card

ISA cards were almost fully supported, including 16-bit mode and vectorized interrupts(thru Z80 IM2). Only video cards were not supported (CPCISA decodes only I/O ports, not memory mapped VRAM).

=== Status ===

The card is working, however only five of them were built (including the initial dev board). This is because the card was complex and outdated, ISA peripherals and the AT standard became old and difficult to find.

Most CPCISA softwares were created by Siou himself (IDE hard disk, ethernet and mouse drivers, as well a an audio sample player thru SoundBlaster 8-bit interface). Initial OS support was done by [[Futur's]] with a set of two ROMs ("Interrupt Lib" ROM to add vectorized interrupt support to Locomotive Firmware, and "ISA ROM" with low level ISA routines). [[Madram]] also created an Adlib music player supporting SA2 module files, which was later adapted by [[PulkoMandy]] to play these modules with the [[Willy]] card equipped with a OPL3LPT device.

It was mostly a proof of concept; none of the drivers and software came to a state really usable for the end user (no filesystem support, no TCP/IP stack...).

=== Additional info ===
*[http://siou.free.fr/General/Pages/index-cpc6128.html Siou's page on CPCISA]. Siou is the creator of the system.
*[http://futurs.chez.com/FElectro.html Some more information about CPCISA from Futurs' website (French)]
*[http://futurs.chez.com/FTelecharge.html Where to download and get information about "Interrupt Lib" and "ISA ROM" from Futurs' website (French).]
*[http://8bit.yarek.pl/interface/cpc.cpcisa/index.html Yarek's CPCISA page] about making a CPC-Isa compatible system which would connect to a full 286 AT PC motherboard.
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