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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.
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You mean like Belkin's? Or my fav, this one (1394b with FW800 support)? Yes.
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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.
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.
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.
"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.
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
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.