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Intel Says Farewell To PCI Bus
KingofGnG writes with this snippet from Sir Arthur's Den, which will make my desktop computer sad: "Soon another technology that in past years dominated the always changing universe of computer hardware will bite the dust. That's the decision by Intel, the merciless executioner of standards that the company itself imposes on the market. In upcoming months it will end official support for the PCI bus. Developed by the chipmaker in 1993, the PCI Local Bus standard was implemented on all motherboards for x86 and compatible platforms until 2004, the year it passed the baton to the younger and faster PCI Express technology."
You can buy expansion cards that run a PCI bridge off the PCIe bus. The chips cost about $5 in bulk, $50 retail for the cards, and make more sense than including the PCIe to PCI bridge chip on all motherboards, when most people don't need them. If there's a large enough market for industrial PCs that have PCI slots then no doubt some board maker will produce a motherboard with the chip built in. All this announcement means is that there won't be PCI support in Intel's southbridge chips.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's not. It's a different API that has a subset of the functionality of OpenGL, and some superficial similarities.
You mean like Belkin's? Or my fav, this one (1394b with FW800 support)? Yes.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Screw configuration and USB booting even (at least for this purpose). The good motherboards these days (such as Asus R2E and others) have the tool ready to launch from bios which can lift the bin file directly from the USB disk. Much easier than going through the steps to make a bootable USB.
Fear is the mind killer.
I don't know about bluetooth, but for lots of applications USB serial ports won't work because USB operates at 5V and serial is supposed to be 12V.
Some devices handle the far-below-spec voltage gracefully, but results are unpredictable at best. But that's ok, I've got my trusty PCI serial card... oh.
Glide was a low-level rasterization library hooked deeply into 3dfx's hardware design that followed a limited subset of OpenGL calls and conventions. Applications written for Glide wouldn't run on any hardware but 3dfx's unless some level of emulation was added, a process which 3dfx vigorously campaigned against until they went belly-up. Nvidia turned a blind eye to it after buying up most of their IP, and thus there are several, variably functional emulators available today.
From TFA:
Intel PCI-free chipsets expected to be unveiled are H67, P67 e H61, they will implement the new LGA1155 CPU socket (which would be a pin less than the current LGA1156), will support 8 independent PCIe 2.0 lanes, Serial ATA connections at 6 Gigabits and 14 USB 2.0 ports. Just to be clear, these chipset are targeted at the consumer market while the new chipsets designed for the enterprise market (Q67, Q65 e B65) will continue to support the PCI bus.
So, Intel says farewell, except that it didn't.
Even if they were, if there's money to be had, I'm pretty sure someone will carve some silicon that motherboard manufacturers can use to bridge PCIe with PCI further downstream from the chipset.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Google for "PCI PCI-e expansion box" (no quotes). One of the first few hits should be for a box that turns a 1x PCI-e slot into 4 33MHz/32bit PCI slots. We recently considered buying one for our PCI National Instruments boards because there are fewer cheap, commodity motherboards with lots of PCI slots.
Since many current systems implement PCI via a PCIe to PCI bridge chip, there is no reason a riser or backplane card cannot be made to connect to the PCIe bus.
In fact, a quick search for such a beast hit a Google Ad that offered a variety of combinations, starting with one that will connect a low-profile PCI card to a PCIe slot for EUR49.
And system vendors can do the same thing to keep offering PCI slots on the motherboard itself.
The Voodoo 5 5500, which also featured multiple identical GPUs, did make it to market. It had two, the 6000 had four.
While the 6000 didn't make it to market, there are examples of them in the wild. I remember a few years back, it was reported that somebody had gotten hold of one and sold it on eBay, and the buyer posted benchmarks so that people could see what might have been.
It is possible to build a voltage converter to output 12V from 5V, you know.... There's no inherent reason they can't make USB serial adapters that comply with the letter of the RS232 spec. Also a lot of PC motherboards use 5V signaling, too, and have done so for years. You just can't guarantee that you'll get +/-12V signaling these days.
BTW, the RS232 spec requires that devices signal at 12V, but requires that they detect signaling as low as 3V. If your device doesn't work correctly with USB adapters, the device is just as noncompliant as the USB adapter.
In short, I think it's time to upgrade your hardware to something that's at least spec-compliant....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Funny, Intel released a board a couple years ago without the legacy ports off the back, no PS/2, no floppy, not serial or parallel even via mb risers... The biggest complaint on newegg, was that people were having issues without the floppy because they couldn't load extra drivers on install for XP.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
You must not have done well at sawing the board in half. At the very least, you shouldn't be getting sparks. The worst you'd have done is sever most of the connections on the card. Not having electricity making a complete circuit isn't the same as a short circuit.
You must not have sawed many boards in half. I find that many of the traces end up dragging into other traces, and much of the time there are ground planes in there that get bent into other traces. Don't critique another person's board sawing when you clearly haven't sawed many boards of your own.
Each processor would proceed sequentially as if it had been better for them not to rise against Saul.
"Get rid of VGA"
FUCK NO. HDMI has too many fucking changes every revision, DVI has a shorter cable range than VGA. I get crisper pictures (with better alignment) on my 32" LCDTV using VGA than with HDMI (which barely works at all.)
And then the lag in HDMI. Double fuck that.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Wait until you need to talk to something that cares about timing.
It's actually made in Kentucky using the same design as the Model M. However, it's still not the same IMO; the plastic is crappier and the key feel not quite right. I also had all kinds of problems with mine not registering keypresses correctly and returned it, and bought a real Model M on ebay.
I think there may be something wrong with your TV. HDMI should be decoded in milliseconds.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
There is also, basically, an ISA bus on your motherboard; in the form of Low Pin Count bus. As a matter of fact...PCI -> PCIe have somewhat similar relation to the one between ISA -> LPC. Roughly the same logically, as far as software is concerned, but implemented using less parallel approach. So your "using pci-e for some of them is a waste of lanes" is probably unjustified.
On board sound might be PCI based logically, but it's partly integrated into the chipset. The "audio chip" you see on a motherboard is often little more than a codec, not sitting on PCI anyway. Similar with Ethernet PHY. Super I/O and BIOS sits on LPC. And "main" chipset often sits on PCIe already.
One that hath name thou can not otter
Don't worry - VIA is still pushing out hardware that meets your requirements. Parallel, Serial - PCI and PCIe! :P
US: http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138187
Canada: http://pccyber.com/?v=Product&i=MB-BS-VIOTECH3100%2B
Although in all seriousness, boards with PCI ports won't stop being produced overnight. You'll only have issues if you need a board with lots of them. Companies like Asus are still pushing out boards with a couple PCI ports.
Here's a passive heatsink board with 1, and a GF7025 board with 2:
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=50891&vpn=AT5NM10-I&manufacture=ASUS
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=50891&vpn=AT5NM10-I&manufacture=ASUS
Don't forget industrial controllers too
---- Booth was a patriot ----
There's still a few manufacturers making C2D boards with a limited number of ISA slots : http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.htm and http://www.commell.com.tw/product/SBC/P4BWA.HTM are two examples.
http://www.adek.com/ATX-motherboards.htm
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Actually, DVI and HDMI are not exactly the same thing. HDMI drops the analog DVI-A pins from the DVI connector, so it's strictly digital-only (or in other words, HDMI is the same as DVI-D and not DVI-I which is what most video cards have). Something you might want to keep in mind if you think you can be clever and chain a HDMI to DVI adapter with a DVI to VGA adapter so you can use one of PC-to-SDTV things you linked to.
If it predates this distinction, it is by default a DX. This is true for both 386 and 486.