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Motherboards With More Slots Sought
cheros writes: "I would be interested if anyone knows of motherboards which have more than the usual 4/5 PCI slots on them (and maybe with one or two ISA slots as well). Extenders would be interesting too, but I can imagine bus timings getting in the way of anything with leads leaving the case. I'm about to build another system (with a 1.3GHz AMD as main processor), and when I start listing the toys I want in it I end up being short of slots. Just add up: sound, SCSI, NIC, TV, FireWire, serial card for extra serial ports (Linux and VT100 - it rocks ;-). And I have this old ISA card I built a while ago with 8 relays - that's no longer usable so I might need another slot for a digital I/O card. Anyone? Pleeze?"
What you're going to have to buy is a server-chipset based system. Desktop systems use, logically, desktop chipsets. Most desktop chipsets are limited to supporting between 4 and 6 PCI bus mastering devices. With onboard video or NIC (both bus mastering devices), you still lose slots because a slot without bus mastering capabilities is basically worthless. You'll want to look for the cheapest server based platform you can find, because servers aren't cheap. (If price weren't a limit, check out some of the Industrial PC vendors (http://www.dtims.com/bpgraph.htm) they have systems with 20 slots!)
Dell has a low end server system that has onboard NIC, U160 SCSI, video and six PCI slots: http://www.dell.com/us/en/bsd/products/model_pedge _1400sc.htm)
Some of the other suggestions would be using PCI extenders, etc. but that poses another problem: IRQ sharing. A PCI slot has four possible IRQ lines routed to its INT_A,INT_B,INT_C,INT_D lines. Most hardware vendors route unique on a per slot basis (INT_A - INT_D are all connected to the same interrupt line) or in a pair (INT_A and INT_C are connected together and INT_B and INT_D are connected together.) (This is done for a variety of reasons, mostly due to the fact that low end chipsets only support four IRQ lines anyway. Most newer server chipsets support 16 or 32.) Using an extender card means that all of the devices connected to the extender are sharing the same IRQ lines, which isn't the best for performance.
Finally, the caveats to using a server chipset system: As mentioned earlier, price (much more than a desktop motherboard) and video. Most server chipsets do not support AGP, or perform poorly when they do.
I have one of these. Works great under linux (Just plug it in!) and sounds amazing... It wasn't even that expensive. Their homepage seems to be down right now though, so maybe they went out of business.
Realllllly thin wires will do it, I believe.
No idea how well these work - I believe this was the model I saw being hawked at Siggraph, and the salesman had no idea about latencies, cable lengths or similar. But he suuuuuure wanted to sell me one today!
Have more than one computer...
Seriously - this is the cheapest solution you are going to find.
Don't try to do everything with one box, have multiple boxes - set up a file server, with lots of disk space, and maybe two or three CD-ROM drives (or, for fun, get a nice SCSI burner and two or three plextor 6 disk changers).
Then, build a media box - put the TV, MP3, DVD and firewire stuff in it - vid capture, etc. It doesn't need an insane size HD - unless you are doing a fair amount of vid capture, then you will want a local AV drive. Most of the data can be dumped to the file server.
For scanning/printing, set up a scan/print (and perhaps even DP) server.
Network all of this using 100BaseT and a hub (or, if you are real cheap like me, use 10BaseT - but spend the money on the cards for 100BaseT, then later get a fast hub). Hook up a KVM switch (I just got a 6 port Aten Master View off Ebay for $50.00 - so it is possible to do this el-cheapo!) to your monitor/mouse/keyboard - so you don't have scads of KVM around - unless you wish to place things so that you can have this (sometimes it is handy to have multiple monitors and such).
Get older motherboards for your ISA connectivity - and distribute everything else...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Has anyone managed to fix the hopeless nightmare that has plagued my hardware in every x86 PC i've owned in the last 5 years?
Why, why are we still stuck with IRQs, and what moron thought the solution to the problem was to 'share' them???
My motherboard (Asus A7Pro) has 5 PCI slots, and an AGP slot, but is only capable of using 3 IRQs, since slots 4 & 5 share an IRQ, slots 2 & 3 share an IRQ and slot 1 and the AGP slot share an IRQ.
the 2 USB controllers on board share an IRQ. They just plain don't work, probably because of the shitty VIA chipset and the fact they share an IRQ.
Its insane. It would be nice if 'IRQ sharing' actually worked, but i get all sorts of problems - USB not working, sound glitches, video glitches, DVD playback card crashing, all because the BIOS, OS and hardware are simply incapable of allocating resources correctly.
And i'm not the only one.
Why put 5 or more slots on a motherboard if its actually not possible to put a card in each one and have the computer work?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
About 6 is the absolute maximum number of slots you can get on a PCI bus segment. There are a limited number of "loads" that a PCI bus can support, usually about 10-12 max. The connector counts as a load and the card itself is a load. To go greater than that, you have to have a PCI-PCI bridge. Unfortunately, when you have to go across a bridge, your performance goes down. Because of the way PCI works, transfers on the bus must be interruptible. If the transfer is going across a bridge, you will gain latency when the bridge has to re-negoitate the transfer.
PCI-X has improved this, but right now, PCI-X devices (and motherboards) are pretty rare. You can't mix PCI and PCI-X on the same bus segment without the bus segment downgrading to PCI functionality.
Also, according to the PCI spec, a card can draw up to 25W, which increases the size of your power supply.
The best bet is to go with a motherboard with some integrated functionality- as others have said, compatability is an issue, but there are motherboard makers out there who use high quality parts (which are well supported in Free-OSes), Adaptec for SCSI, Intel for ethernet, and so forth, but you're going to have to pay more for it.
While we're on the m'board wishlist, it sure would be nice to have some chipset support both:
- AMD Athlon
- 64 bit PCI
at the same time!Mebbe the same people that are in charge of scheduling SMP Athlon are in charge of scheduling the 64 bit PCI slot.
I'd hate to have to wait until '02 and the *Hammer series to get speedy connections to my peripherals on an AMD system.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I dont really see what the problem with integrated sound is. Comparatively few people ever actually record things using their soundcard and anyone that gives a damn about quality will surely be using a digital interconnect between their soundcard and amplifier.
I've heard a cheap ($15) soundcard connected to a dts speaker system and as you would expect - it sounds fantastic.
Obviously if you insist on analogue then it's a bind but moving the DAC outside of the computer case is the only way to get half decent quality.
SCSI is more efficient than ATA100, can seek faster, has better transfer, and supports more devices. And 160 is faster than 100.
Price-wise, ATA wins, but if you're looking for something where you need real performance, you need SCSI.
So you're a karma whore, eh? For the right price, I'll be a karma pimp...
SIG: HUP
Not really any solution that could be actually useful in this case would be cheap.
Of course, I guess it really just depends on how much you're willing to spend.