I don't think ISA slots are fast enough to support USB.

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There are no ISA USB cards. There are no DOS drivers for USB (Well, there is one $10,000.00 one for embeded devices). USB totally sucks and you can get Adaptec SCSI Host Cards for peanuts now. PS/2 mouse and SCSI printer, scanner and external hard\CD drive = VERY FREAKING FAST! USB mice, keyboards, speakers, modems, network cards, ect. are just toys. My 2 Canadian Pesos worth.........

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Thanks for comments!.... Reason I asked was I got a PenCam 2 camera and it is has a USB connection and well I do loads (auctions/eBay/etc..) with my older 486 and thought why not try to hook on to it.. but I guess I will have to use my other pc.. Thanks again...

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I have to agree with Doofus. As for Fred6008: ISA is much faster then USB 1.0 In short: USB sucks! Try to get serial, parallel or scsi hardware that does the job (as long as you can......)

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I have quite the same problem than Tony C. : to "read" small images from a "little" Web camera (max 640x480) with a USB port to a 486/66(Mhz)(but with W98SE+32Mo+3GOHD !) with just LPT+COM port and ISA bus... You say - ISA is slower than USB : true ? - someone say try to connect USB by LPT; no problem with speed ? Where to find this kind of adapter ? (by LPT or COM)

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Hi to all Well, I have that problem too. My Laptop just has serial and parallel ports :-(( It woul be great to have access to usb-devices. Perhaps using an evaluation Board from www.cypress.com? Hmmm... it is probably built for USBtoParallel not the way we need it, perhaps it works with some effort the other way? As i can see, then there is no driver necessary. Isn't it? Aren't there Websites just for old computer users? Perhaps they have solved the problem! Does anybody know them? Greets Alesch

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hmmm... I've seen connections from nic's to usb but only for networking... and software does all the work on the machine without the nic.. but maybe someone could make an adapter [and the software] to use a cat5 to usb for usb devices? just a thought.

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Hummmmm... usb and serial... yep they make the adaptors and they work well without the usb function enabled on you motherboard. Theproblem is with pencam no "NO ONE" has a dos driver that I know of, except that pencam driver dude in the uk, u know the one that has pencam so worked up about there software? (just see there home page) no I wont give a url search for it it is good for you. But now red hat? yes a bunch of drivers are out there so download linux and learn the qbasic and go for it. Vengence is mine sayeth the dark_1.

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Guys, USB 1.X is NOT faster than ISA. ISA is an 8MHz (to 10MHz) 16 bit bus. Because it is parallel it could be considered a 16MB interface in terms of bandwidth (large B = byte). Compare that to USB 1.X's serial maximum of 12Mb (bit) per second and ISA is 10X to 20X faster than USB given dedicated tasks and access to the bus. Both however have their overhead.The ISA slot may be a shared bus if in an older system and though it supports DMA xfers the shared bandwidth with another device/task would cut into it's effective speed for a given task. USB 1.X on the the hand has an absolute max throughput of 12Mbits/secnd which also includes header and endpoint information that eats into that speed. This too assumes a best case situation of a dedicated USB port for the task being considered because even if a controller (i.e. keyboard) is added it potentially hoses the speed. We've seen a max of about 1MB (byrtes per second for effective USB 1.X bulk transfers). USB 2.0 on the other hand is barely supported by Microsoft or other vendors - with current beta drivers we've seen it max out at 10MB/sec average for mass storage applications though that was more likely due to notebook hard drive speed limitations. So, it's an apples to oranges (serial to parallel) comparison but technically ISA is still faster than common USB 1.X though arguably not better since it's less robust electrically and is certainly obsolete. USB 2.0 is faster but not well supported where it needs to be (i.e. Microsoft's W2K drivers for USB2.0 expired last October & have not been replaced) B

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Tony, I have a (VIP-VLB, ISA, PCI) 486 (AMD 5x86-133). You must have Win95 OSR 2.1 or OSR 2.5 to use usb (or win98 and up, minus NT4). I have OSR 2.5 installed on my 486 machine. I have tried desperately to get a PCI usb card working, it just won´t work. It is an OPTI card saying it will work on 486s and win95 osr 2.1. There are two things I have come up with in my google searches: 1. "There are some 486 PC's with PCI slots, but often they have an early revision of the PCI spec, and generally won't work. You'll also need a USB card." and 2. "Can I install Windows OSR2.1 (with USB support) on my 486 motherboard? Only in case your BIOS chip is an EEPROM, or flashable, BIOS ROM chip." I am not sure which revision of PCI I have, I wouldn´t know how to find that out, and I am 99% sure I do NOT have one of the rare flashable 486 boards. When I get some extra time, I am going to attempt a Win98 install on the 486 to see if the usb card still does not operate. Hope this helps.

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ARrrrrrr the pen cam.... i too own a 486, and have just purchased a cam, foolishly thinking there would be a way around the no usb prob.... seems i should just upgrade huh? Yea....DAM F***ING PENCAM!!!!!!!!!

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