They are not very usable not very good. They fail a lot of the time and/or are extremely buggy.

I've had phone calls with Greg Kroah-Hartman, extended private e-mails and some mailing list threads.

In fact I have one sitting here. "certified" to work with OSX and Windows Vista and Windows XP.

I also have a USB to PCMCIA adapter. Works better than the USB to ISA Adapter and lets just say... just better.

Can easily run WindowsXP. Just don't load them up... with huge policies and and restrictions and tons and tons of backgrounded processes.

Also, there is a few places where these *will* work. after testing and testing and tweaking and tweaking.

You see, USB was never quite intended to do this...

Plus, there are three hardware signal conversions going on which makes thing horribly buggy. As You'll encounter, USB to PCI chipset (yes PCI) and then PCI to ISA Bridge chipset and then the ISA Chipset.

At least the problems I've experienced is attributed to the *additive* hysteresis of the signal conversions as the only real ground between the module and the motherboard is the USB ground... which as a "good" ground" its not. Its not a good signal ground nor is it a good shielding ground. There-in lies the real issue.

Also, I've run WindowsXP on Pentium 166MHz machines with 32MB of memory... not well, but its does do the job as a controller for a machine... once running. Takes a while... but you know that anyway.