ISA passthrough​

[Torinde]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

No response

What you want

Access hardware ISA devices in DOSbox-X like in VirtualXT (don't know if codebases are close enough to share parts).

ISA is supported officially by:

• DOS/9x/XP out of the box
• Vista/Server 2008 but has to be enabled by the user
• Windows 7/8/10 by ARS Technologies USB2ISA
• Linux/BSD (which versions?)

ISA slots/devices are available via:

• up to Core 2 Quad Q9400 and Q77/Ivy Bridge industrial boards with ISA slots (documentation mentions Win7/10 as supported, but unclear if that applies also to the ISA slots); Vortex86EX2
• LPC-to-ISA adapter (for example via TPM header) - thus at least up to Z97/Ryzen AM4
• PCIe-to-PCI and PCI-to-ISA adapters of various forms
• PCIe-to-ISA adapter - for example with CH367, CH368 (supports memory mapping and "BusMaster/ DMA") or ASIX AX99100 bridge
• USB-to-ISA adapter 1 2 3 (they even sell dosbox-x.conf and win9x.img files) - specifying support on Win10

Describe alternatives you've considered

No response

Additional information

No response

Have you checked that no similar feature request(s) exist?

• I have searched and didn't find any similar feature request.

Code of Conduct & Contributing Guidelines

• I agree to follow the code of conduct and the contributing guidelines.

[johnnovak]

Just curious, what do you need this for @Torinde?

[hagsted]

I have just board an Arstech usb2isa-slot for a project at work. From my opinion it would be nice to use the upstream dosbox-x for running the dos software with ISA access, instead of using a custom build, even though it is supplied from Arstech.

[9600]

+1. I'd like to be able to use old ISA bus Transputer cards with their corresponding DOS development tools, via the convenience of a modern networked system running Linux.

[joncampbell123]

After March 1st, perhaps I could add a stub routine for you that is called for unassigned I/O or memory ranges. It would do nothing by default, but you could easily fill it in with something to route that I/O off to the whatever-to-ISA converter you are using. Would that help?

[djtuBIG-MaliceX]

I too have recently picked up one of the ARStech usb2isa boards, however while it can 'detect' some ESS ISA sound cards I have to a limited degree, I can't seem to get sound coming out of them using their custom dosbox-x build. Even tried turning off sound emulation in case ports were being 'mapped out'. Maybe there's a mode required to allow direct port writes to pass through for what's usually used for audio?

[Torinde]

What are the differences between ARStech DOSbox-X and the actual DOSbox-X? What did they change?
Can you share some readme/instruction file? Or even better the source code of the adapted version?