Since the old ISA Hardsid is not being sold anymore, I'll publish some
of
my research work here. I had plans of designing a PCI version of the
Hardsid
with full compatibility with the ISA version. Hard Software has
recently
released their own Hardsid PCI, so my project is now pointless. Well, I
still
could design my own PCI version, and release the information how to
construct
such a card, but just now I have much more importants things to do.
According
to this
posting in the CBM hackers mailing list, the Hardsid was originally
meant
to be free for people to build.
To design a PCI version, I first had to know how the original Hardsid
works.
I reverse-engineered the ISA card and drew schematics. The hand-drawn
schematics
were a mess, so I thought of re-drawing them using a PCB design
software.
At that point I had an interesting idea: I had the schematics on a PCB
software,
why not to design a PCB of it? Then I would be absolutely certain that
schematics
are correct.
