Modern computers have reached extraordinary levels of performance and efficiency, but they also left some things behind. Support for legacy interfaces is almost nonexistent, which presents difficulties when combining classic hardware with recent platforms. However, YouTube user TheRasteri has just presented a very interesting solution called dISAppointment board, which connects an ISA slot to any motherboard with a TPM header.
The quickest and most effective way to run retro software on a modern computer is using emulation environments like DOSBox. Its configuration is very flexible and has dozens of parameters to adapt the environment to any need... but it's not a magic solution either. Some games are very capricious and work better when we use real hardware.
That reveals another problem: legacy interfaces are conspicuous by their absence on modern platforms. For example, the lack of an ISA slot prevents us (except in rare exceptions) from installing compatible Sound Blaster cards and obtaining sound under MS-DOS. Fortunately, that situation could change with the new development by Andy, better known as TheRasteri on YouTube. It's the dISAppointment board, a board that allows us to connect a 16-bit ISA interface to any computer with a TPM header.
dISAppointment board: ISA slots on modern computers
In essence, this adaptation is possible thanks to the LPC bus (Low Pin Count) created by Intel in 1998. LPC was designed to connect limited-bandwidth devices to the processor. Among those devices are the serial and parallel ports, PS/2 connectors, and floppy disk controllers. However, the most interesting thing is that LPC is exposed through the TPM header (the same one where the modules that Microsoft requires for Windows 11 are installed).
The demo is short but conclusive. The board uses an ATX connector to obtain power (a splitter is more than enough) and a small cable for the link with the TPM. TheRasteri said he will share a longer video in the future, but we already have some very interesting details. His test platform is based on an Intel Core i5 with Sandy Bridge architecture. That means the computer isn't that "new" but definitely newer than the ISA interface.
And so we come to the requirements: TheRasteri indicates that any Intel computer with a chipset that has an LDRQ signal should work correctly. Information about AMD chipsets is scarce, and they most likely need a different initialization process (but that does not mean they are incompatible). At the same time, TPM headers do not follow a standard, and that can complicate things.
Fortunately, the story doesn't end here. TheRasteri confirmed that dISAppointment board will be an open source project, and we estimate that its compatibility will not take long to expand.
Source: Adafruit. Access the project on GitHub: Click here.
