ISA card in a PCI slot.

For an an going project in my A+ class we are collect the information to build the best computer ever. Well the limit is 2,500 I am going for under 1,000 dollars since I plan to build a new computer at the end of next summer and will use the one I designed as a starting point. Well looking at pentium 4 boards I saw that they only had PCI slots and not any ISA slots. This is all fine and danny except for the fact my moddem and sound card witch I was not planning on buying are ISA cards, for my new computer. If I don't buy the new cards they would not count towered the 1000 limmit since I would not use them.

So my qustion is how could I put an ISA card into a PCI slot if at all?

---Note: I have yet to look at AMD boards.

short answer... you can't. Everyone is going away from ISA.

Longer answer... they may have expansion pci boards with ISA capabilities, but that would be determined by the layout of your architecture.

You can't. An ISA device would have too many pins to connect into a PCI slot.

>You can't. An ISA device would have too many pins to connect into a PCI slot.<

I know that, I was thinking of something like a converter. Well searching ebay I once found a device that would allow you to you could put in a 32 pin ram slot, then in turn could put 72 pin ram into it. Or something like that.

Well something like that might exist, but you can guarantee that it would be both proprietry and hard to come by. If it were me would just update your modem and sound card. This wouldn't be that expensive, and you'd have up to date equipment.

I kinda figued that, but I figured I ask anyways. Hopefully the will put cable through here, before hand.

hmmm... i could see how ram slot extenders could physically work... but how would you convert an ISA to a PCI and vice versa... physically it would appear that you couldn't... again, you'd need proprietry hw for the extender, and so far as i could figure, the card which uses the extended slot as well...

and, as a side note... who keeps their cards out of sync of their motherboard anyway? :p

Stick to PCI. (I got +10% when I removed my last ISA card)

There is no support for ISA and as far as I know you can't fit one to a PCI slot. They may not be stable on a 133MHz bus as well.

I also have a PCI Creative AWE64 soundcard. I can't get the drivers for it. The last ones were released in 1999. Has troubles with Dx8.0a. I would buy a board with the AC97 sound, the ones I have used work well.

I would get an Athlon, RAID (or 7200rpm+ HD) and DDR. Forget the P4 until the DDR boards arrive as RAMBUS is not up to scratch and is having legal and competion problems (may disappear).

Look for the nVida mainboards arriving soon.

Boy, if you want a cheap, fast and avesome computer go and buy a double Athlon MP.