ISA to USB - Are these anywhere to be found?

I have been looking for an ISA to USB 8bit card for my IBM XT (see picture below). At some point these cards seemed to be around and Lo-Tech had stock (out of stock since I don't know when).
Now the only places I found that these cards seemed to be heavily commented and reviewed are on some Chinese vintage computer sites and their info (translated) is great, But aren't these cards no longer in the circuit of Western Vintage Computing at all? Any one knows where might find the parts or a kit of an assembled one?

The lo-tech isa-usb cards were experimental but didn't get very far unfortunately, The chinese isa-usb cards were available on aliexpress and a few members bought from them IIRC, There is a couple of threads on here somewhere.

I see. Thanks Malc. I found a seller from China that has some available. I will post more on this when it arrives.

Yes, Please post back when it arrives and let us know how you get on, Are you getting the Boot Rom with it ?.

Looking at old post and making updates. The card never arrived, Seller in Taobao asked me to pay extra for shipping where I live, and again pay gain for a Cd with drivers… then he claimed that could not be sent out because of export restrictions and never replied again any of my messages… complete scam.

Unfortunately Lo-Tech never finished the R2 ISA-USB card they started, Why i dunno, The only ones i know of are from Chinese sellers on ebay, I wouldn't buy one of them.

So you're looking for a USB host interface that you can plug into an ISA bus? Or did you want it to work the other way around, with the ISA board acting as a client (e.g., providing a serial or USB FIFO interface used by another machine acting as the host)?

I'm feeling that the easiest way to go for the former might be to use a modern microcontroller that can act as a USB host, and program it to provide some sort of API on the ISA bus for whatever you want to connect to. (This could be as simple as just talking to USB HID devices, or as complex as providing a full USB host stack.)

Malc said:

Unfortunately Lo-Tech never finished the R2 ISA-USB card they started, Why i dunno, The only ones i know of are from Chinese sellers on ebay, I wouldn't buy one of them.

Click to expand...

It's completely documented:

So it should not be hard to build one - all info is there. But given that these are not full USB host controllers anyway and only work as storage, I have trouble understanding the need for one. Simply use an XT-IDE card with CF.

If you are looking for a way to e.g. connect USB mouse and keyboard, there are external adapters.

Timo W. said:

It's completely documented:

Click to expand...

I know it is, That is the first 'Experimental' design, I have got one of those, Had it since lo-tech sold the PCB's years ago. It works.

Timo W. said:

So it should not be hard to build one

Click to expand...

That has been on my to try list for a long time.

Timo W. said:

I have trouble understanding the need for one. Simply use an XT-IDE card with CF.

Click to expand...

I like using flash drives, I can also use SD / CF cards in a USB adapter, Flash drives / SD Cards are cheaper than CF.
I have had XT-IDE cards with CF since the beginning, I use an XT-IDE with CF and my ISA-USB card with Flash drive in my XT, I can 'hot swap' the USB drive as needed, I can't 'hot swap' the CF in the XT-IDE.

Timo W. said:

If you are looking for a way to e.g. connect USB mouse and keyboard, there are external adapters.

Click to expand...

I have zero interest in using USB mouse or keyboard, I'm only interested in storage.

I had no problems with one bought off of AliExpress. You need to cut and jumper a few wires if you want to use it with the "16-bit wide port" mode and appropriately configured software for a marginal performance boost. See this post https://forum.vcfed.org/index.php?threads/isa-usb-board.76978/post-1273514

Malc, I'm wondering what you meant by "hot swap"?

If you interpret it as "unplug the drive and put a new one in while the PC is on", I'm curious what software you're using.

The BIOS I worked on for the CH375 cards is NOT hot-swap capable. It never advertises the drive having changed. (Hell, the CH375 itself doesn't provide an obvious way to know it changed). So if you pull one drive out and plug another in with that BIOS, it does horrible things (garbage directory listings at least, didn't dare try to load or write anything)

I also did a few quick experiments, and re-running the BIOS initialization or INT 13 function 0 (disc reset), or advertising the drive changed on any INT 13 function 16 check didn't help; I assume stuff like LS-120 and SyQuest drives did additional things to tell DOS they were removable.

OTOH, if it's just "the plug is on the back of the PC so I can power off and replace it more easily than a CF card inside the case", I can get it entirely. I do the same thing.

Bit 7 in word 0 of the return from the 0xec IDENTIFY DRIVE command if set, indicates that the medium is removable. Just that simple. Windows XP and later looks at this bit and refuses to install the swap file on a removable device; it can also refuse to install XP on the same device. Fortunately, there's a device driver "wedge" that masks this flag.

I think that's at a different level. 0xEC as IDENTIFY DRIVE seems to be an IDE/ATA command, not something we can really present when it's a completely non-IDE device.

Hak Foo said:

I had no problems with one bought off of AliExpress. You need to cut and jumper a few wires if you want to use it with the "16-bit wide port" mode and appropriately configured software for a marginal performance boost. See this post

Click to expand...

There seem's to be 2 or 3 different versions of the Chinese ISA-USB card floating around, I know the boot rom socket didn't work in some from previous post's, Cutting and jumpering wires and adding an IC to make the card do what it should is not worth the hassle, It's too expensive for that crap.

Hak Foo said:

Malc, I'm wondering what you meant by "hot swap"?

Click to expand...

I know your BIOS is not hot-swap capable, What i meant was using FreddyV's Dos driver one can swap out the USB drive with the PC running, No need to switch off or Re-boot.

I see you have updated your BIOS recently, I will update the boot rom in my card when i can. Your BIOS is very useful.