Internal SATA interface: Addonics
*Please note that PCMCIA-ATA Hard Drives and ATA Flash Cards are also supported in many Readers and Adaptors*
PCMCIA (Laptop) Cards usually require AP Soft's Card and Socket Services Software, which is available in both 16bit and 32bit (Cardbus) versions. PCCard CD Drivers and Network Interface Card Packet Drivers may function without any additional software.
New laptops may not have Serial or Parallel Ports, the solution is to use a PCMCIA adaptor available from Quatech in conjunction with AP Soft's Card and Socket Services Software.
Dial-up ISA (non P'n'P) internal or serial external (Hayes) hardware modems are compatible with Arachne, DOSLynx, Nettamer web browsers and other software without drivers. Whilst ISA plug'n'play versions and PCI/CNR/AMR format cards, especially WinModems will not function as no DOS compatibility.
ISDN ISA (non P'n'P) internal or serial external modems are compatible with Arachne and DOSLynx web browsers providing DOS drivers are avaialable.
CABLE Modems which connect via an ethernet cable are compatible with Arachne and DOSLynx web browsers, providing the configuration of the modem/set top box does not require being connected to a Computer.
Optical Drives require a Device Driver, QCDROM for IDE/ATAPI (PATA) or GCDROM for SATA, which will assign a drive letter. Please note on early PC's the CD's were attached to the sound card and the drivers are incorporated into the sound card driver software package.
Ethernet 10/100 ISA/PCI ethernet chipsets will most likely have Packet and NDIS2 drivers available, which are required for the TCP/IP network protocol, but support may not be available for other network protocols. Ethernet 1000 Gigabit have less support and have only been able to loacate NDIS2 and ODI drivers for the Marvell Yukon GigE.
If you require basic level IPX networking for playing games over a LAN then install the PDIPX Packet Shim Driver as well as the Packet Driver.
Sound cards in non plug'n'play ISA format are usually Sound Blaster Compatible and may be configurable without drivers using the SET BLASTER variable in the AUTOEXEC.BAT file.
Sound Chips manufactured by CMedia (CMI8328/329/8330/8338/8738) on either PCI cards or incorporated on thea motherboard have full support. SiS7018 incorporated on the motherboard has full support. VIA VT82C686A/VT82C686B/VT8231 chipsets incorporated on the motherboard are supported if there is also a Sound Blaster setting in the BIOS which needs to be enabled. Creative Sound Blaster plug'n'play ISA and PCI format sound cards have full support, with drivers for the SB PCI and Live available form Mame.
Sound Chips found on recent motherboards are generally classed as AC97, Scitechsoft have drivers for the following chipsets incorporated on the motherboard, AC97 (ATI SB200, SB300, SB400, Intel ICH2, ICH3, ICH4, ICH5, ICH6 and nVidia nForce, nForce2, nForce3) and HDA (ATI SB450 and Intel ICH6, ICH7), though may support other Sound Chips and PCI Sound Cards.
ISA/PCI/AGP Graphic Cards and On-board Graphics Controllers are VGA compatible, though software which has been written to the VBE (VESA BIOS Extension) graphics standard may not always be compatible. Intel provide a summary of known issues with their 82xxx series and 740i Graphics Controllers. Scitechsoft provide freeware utilities to ensure that supported Graphics Chips meet the VBE (VESA BIOS Extension) graphics standard. Scitechsoft's latest Snap Graphics Package supports more recent Graphics Chips.
Graphic Cards with S-Video Out may be able to output a signal to a TV, with the latest ATI Radeon 7000AGP 4x Card was able to use a Hitachi TV with S-Video front port as a monitor, fortunately 'autodetection of input source' is a standard feature, though it would only work when booting from a floppy disk. AverMedia External Convertors will enable a TV to be used as a Monitor.
PCI TV Cards if they use a Brooktree/Conexanent 878/Fusion878A Chipset may be able to receive a signal using the underdevoloped Brooktree BT8x8 driver, though I was only able to receive a signal and change channels utilising a VCR with a Scart Output, though not very good clarity of picture (sound was not connected).
FM Radio Cards were produced by Aztech Labs and run out stock is available from HopCo, they can also be found in older Packard Bell PC's. Aztech drivers are available from HopCo and Packard Bell's version are listed as Radio FM3.
IDE/ATA/SATA hard drives formatted in FAT16 have a 2GB partition size limit, see MS fdisk. Older computers may have a limitation in the BIOS where the full capacity of the hard drive may not be recognised, additional software called Disk Managers, usually available from the manufacturers website can be installed to overcome this limitation.
Parallel Port Printers are supported through the software installed, Epson Dot Matrix Printers are ideal for text printing.
Parallel Ports are not installed on many 32bit (Cardbus) compatible Laptops, Trans Digital offer a PCMCIA Parallel Port Card which is fully compatible with the I/O of a standard port.
Micro Solutions BackPack Parallel Port CD drives are available and supported.
IOMEGA Zip/Jaz drives are supported for the following interfaces: Parallel, IDE and SCSI. MSDOS version 5.xx or compatable and a 386CPU are the minimum requirements for using the GUEST.EXE Driver.
SCSI drives require ISA or PCI adapter cards, of which two types are available, bootable is for the C: drive plus other drives, non-boot is for additional hard drives and CD/CDRW drives where a bootable drive is present , see PCGuide for more information. Please note that bootable C: drives may be DOS installable without drivers installed.
Optical Recognition (OCR) Scanners which usually came with an ISA adaptor card will scan black and white documents only.