ISA BUS

(Industry Standard Architecture)

Cahit Tark Gen
What is BUS ?
A bus connects all the internal computer
components to the CPU and Main memory.

Every bus has a clock speed measured in
MHz. A fast bus allows data to be transferred
faster, which makes applications run faster.
On PCs, the old ISA bus is being replaced by
faster buses such as PCI.
I/O BUS

System Bus: Connecting to CPU, memory and Cache.
Address Bus
Data Bus
Control Bus


I/O Bus: Connecting to the above three buses is the "good old"
standard I/O bus, used for slower peripherals (mice, modems,
regular sound cards, low-speed networking) and also for
compatibility with older devices. On almost all modern PCs this is
the Industry Standard Architecture (ISA) bus.

Types of I/O Buses
ISA

Micro Channel (MCA)

EISA

VESA Local bus (VL-bus)
PCI Local bus

AGP

PC-Card (PCMCIA)

USB

Fire Wire (IEEE-1394)
I/O BUS
ISA BUS (8-16-bit)
EISA BUS (32-bit)
PCI BUS (32 or 64-bit)
AGP (32-bit)

ISA BUS

In 1982 when ISA BUS appeared on the first PC the
8-bit ISA bus ran at a modest 4.77 MHZ the same
speed as Intel 8088. ISA BUS is extremely slow by
today's standards and not suited to the use of a
graphical operating system like Windows.
ISA BUS

In 1984 the IBM AT was introduced using the Intel 80286;
at this time the bus was doubled to 16 bits (the 80286's data
bus width) and increased to 8 MHz (the maximum speed of
the original AT, which came in 6 MHz and 8 MHz versions
and 24 address lines).
ISA BUS
8-bit
16-bit
ISA BUS
Bus width 8 - bit
Compatible with 8 bit ISA
Pins 62
Power +5 V, -5 V, +12 V, -12 V
Clock 4.7727266 MHz
Bus width 16 - bit
Compatible with 16 bit ISA
Pins 98
Power +5 V, -5 V, +12 V, -12 V
Clock
8.333333 MHz
8-bit ISA BUS 16-bit ISA BUS
ISA BUS
is used with sound cards, disk drives or most
network and video cards.

8-bit ISA(XT) CARD 16-bit ISA CARD
ISA BUS
ISA Card
ISA BUS

Original 8 bit ISA
connectors
Additional
connections
converts to 16 bit
ISA
VESA connectors
ISA BUS
In the figure you can see the pinouts of
the ISA BUS. The BUS is divided into
two sides. The first side pins are named
A1 to A31 and it is the components side.
It consists of the address and data
buses. The second side pins are named
B1 to B31 and it is the solder side. This
side contents the power pins and the
signals related to interrupts and DMA
transfers.
ISA BUS
20 bits of Address bus
5, 12V
Power & G
IRQ lines
2-7
IRQ lines
8 - 15
Extra 8 bits of
I/O bus
Extra 4 bits of
Address bus
More
DMA
lines clock
Original 8 bit ISA 16 bit
More
DMA
lines
8 bits of I/O bus
ISA BUS
A0-A19 (pins A31 to A12): This twenty lines are the address BUS.They can address 1MB (2^20 bytes).
D0-D7 (pins A9 to A2): The data BUS consist of this eight data lines.
AEN (pin B11): It is used for the DMA controller to take over the data and address buses in a DMA
transfer.

GND (pins B1, B10, B31): Connected to the ground of the computer.
+5V (pins B3, B29): 5V DC output of the power source.
-5V (pin B5): -5V DC output.
-12V (pin B7): -12V DC output.
+12V (pin B9): +12V DC output.
MEMW (pin B11): The P asserts this signal when doing a write to the memory.
MEMR (pin B12): The P asserts this signal when doing a read from the memory.
IOW (pin B13): The P asserts this signal when doing a write to a port.
IOR (pin B14): The P asserts this signal when doing a read from a port.
DACK0-DACK3 (pins B15, B17, B19 and B26): The DMA controller sets this signals to let a device know
that the DMA has the control of the buses.
DRQ1-DRQ3 (pins B6, B16 and B18): Allow the peripheral boards to request the use of the buses.
+T/C (pin B27): The DMA controller sets this signal to let the peripheral know that the programmed
number of bytes has been sent.
IRQ2-IRQ7 (pins B4, B21, B22, B23, B24 and B25): Interrupt signals. The peripheral devices sets this
signals to request for the attention of the P.
ALE (pin 28): This signal is used for the P to lock the 16 lower address BUS in a latch during a memory
(or port) input/output operation.
CLOCK (pin 20): Is the system clock.
OSC (pin 30): Is a high frequency clock which can be used for the I/O boards.
Describing the Read operation of the ISA
CPU sends out a high on the
ALE signal, then sends out
the A0-A19 lines. On the
address of the target port to
be read will be latched. Then
the BUS takes the -IOR
signal to a low level. So that
the addressed device will
take a data byte to the D0-
D7 data bus. The
microprocessor will read then
the data bus and take the -
IOR signal to a high again.
Describing the Read/Write operation of the ISA
The only difference between a
memory read/write cycle and
a port read/write cycle is that
in a memory cycle the -MEMR
and -MEMW signals will be
asserted, working the same
way as -IOR and -IOW do.
ISA BUS
Intel
80386DX
CPU
Address bus(32 bit)
Data bus (32 bit)
A
0
to A
31
D
0
to D
31
RD WR IO/M
Control bus
I/O
bus
(16
bit
data)
Storage
Printer
Video
Modem
Memory
Keyboard
Bus Structure of Intel 486

CPU
Local bus or CPU bus: fast (33 MHz, 32 bits) [30 nsec./cycle]
Memory Cache
Video
Adapter
Disk
Expansion
Bus
Controller
RTC
ISA bus: slow (8 MHz, 8/16 bits) [125 nsec./cycle]
Keyboard
Serial
Port
Parallel
Port
Floppy
Disk
System
ROM
ISA BRIDGE
Bus Structure of Intel Pentium

Pentium
CPU
CPU bus: fast (100 MHz, 64 bits) [10 nsec./cycle]
Memory Cache
Video
Adapter
System
ROM
Expansion
Bus
Controller
RTC
ISA bus: slow (8 MHz, 8/16 bits) [125 nsec./cycle]
Keyboard
Serial
Port
Parallel
Port
Floppy
Disk
PCI
Controller
PCI bus: fast (33 MHz, 32/64 bits) [30 nsec./cycle]
Disk
North Bridge
South Bridge
Bus Structure of Intel Pentium

Expansion
Bus
Controller

M/IO #(memory
or i/o address)
D/C# (Data or code)
W/R# (Write or Read)
AEN#
A31-A3 (Address Lines)
BE7# - BE0# (Byte Enable
Lines)
CLK
BRDY# (Burst Ready)
CPU Bus PCI Bus
AD[31:0]
C/BE#[3:0]
FRAME#
TRDY#
IRDY#
STOP#
REQ#
GNT#
D31-D0
NORTH BRIDGE
Bus Structure of Intel Pentium

Expansion
Bus
Controller

CLK
MEMR#
MEMW#
IOR#
IOW#
INTA#
A23-A0
PCI Bus ISA Bus
AD[31:0]
C/BE#[3:0]
FRAME#
TRDY#
IRDY#
STOP#
REQ#
GNT#
D23-D0
SOUTH BRIDGE
ALE
ISA BUS INTERRUPT SYSTEM
16-bit ISA bus chains two 8259As together.
IRQ 9 is used to re-route anything trying to
use IRQ 2.
Incorporated in chip set.



INTERRUPT CONTROLLER
80x86
INTR
8259A
IRQ0
IRQ1
IRQ2
IRQ3
IRQ4
IRQ5
IRQ6
IRQ7
8259A
IRQ0 (8)
IRQ1 (9)
IRQ2 (10)
IRQ3 (11)
IRQ4 (12)
IRQ5 (13)
IRQ6 (14)
IRQ7 (15)
(IRQ 2)
Elimination of ISA Bus
ISA Bus is slow, hard to use and bulky.
ISA plug in cards to be replaced by either PCI
plug-in cards or USB add-on peripherals
Limited number of interrupts.
No central registry.



Elimination of ISA Bus
The ISA bus is limited to 24 bits of
address. 2^24 = 16 MBytes. It means that
an ISA card that uses DMA cannot
physically access memory beyond 16
MBytes of RAM. This is a limitation of the
ISA bus.
Elimination of ISA Bus
Motherboard gets 32-bit data from ISA BUS
at two times. Meanwhile at this time ISA BUS
declares wait state to the motherboard.
Therefore ISA BUS may reduce System
Performance.

Elimination of ISA Bus
If you use a ISA based controller card such
as Ultra SCSI - 40Mb / sec or
SCSI-2 Fast - 10 Mb / sec , you can expect
no more than an 8Mb per second transfer
rate from your controller card.
Elimination of ISA Bus
PCI cards have Plug and Play technology
and can configure themselves, so Operating
Systems distinguish them.
ISA cards are more cumbersome to install
than other cards because I/O addresses,
interrupts and clock speed must be set using
jumpers and switches on the card itself.
Elimination of ISA Bus
Bus Type MB/sec
VL-bus 100 MBps
VL-bus 132 MBps
32-Bit PCI 132 MBps
PCI-X 66 512 MBps
PCI-X 133 1 GBps
AGP x1 264 MB/s
AGP x2 528 MB/s
AGP x4 1056 MB/s
AGP x8 2112 MB/s
PCI Express x1 500 MB/s
PCI Express x2 1000 MB/s
PCI Express x4 2000 MB/s
PCI Express x8 4000 MB/s
PCI Express x12 6000 MB/s
PCI Express x16 8000 MB/s