[techtalk] ISA / PCI

Amanda Owens amowens at radonc.duke.edu
Wed Oct 27 07:42:53 EST 1999


Actually, most current motherboards (at least socket 7 boards, like those 
that will hold an AMD K6-2) have both PCI and ISA slots. the dmesg might 
say something about ISA (though mine doesn't seem to) but it's probably 
easiest to pop open the machine and look. A recent motherboard will have 
three different types of slots. Near the top of the motherboard (ie: the 
hightest slot in a tower) is an AGP slot. They're usually brown (I 
think). The next few, about the same length as the AGP slot (though I 
think the pinouts are different) will be PCI - they're short. The bottom 
ones are usually ISA - they're longer than the PCI (they have, like, two 
slots, one the same length as PCI and another, shorter one. So you could 
shove a PCI card into an ISA slot, but it won't work). ISA cards will be 
hung off of the metal that slides into the slot in the opposite 
direction: ie, the metal at the end will go *up* from the top of an ISA 
card, but it will go down from the bottom of a PCI card. Thus, many 
machines have one port that has both slots in close proximity, and where 
you can only plug either an ISA or a PCI card into it.

Of course, an easier thing to do might be to try to figure out (without 
opening your box) what the motherboard is, and look that up online. I'm 
rather surprised The Linux Store didn't send you docs with the machine - 
most companies will send you a booklet that has all your motherboard 
specs in it.

HTH.
Mur!

On Wed, 27 Oct 1999, Neil ''Fred'' Picciotto wrote:

> how can i determine whether my machine has ISA?  i know that it has PCI, so
> i suspect it does not, but i believe that there exist some motherboards
> with both...  is there any way to determine this from software?  if not, i
> suppose i'll open the box up, but even then, how can i tell?
> 
> (i'm a little embarrassed to be asking such a basic question, but i know
> next to nothing about hardware -- i'm really just a software geek!  i was
> originally going to build my own machine, but after a while of not finding
> the time to do that, i decided to buy a machine from "thelinuxstore.com"...
> i should have saved somewhere the specs on the machine from their website,
> but i didn't, and their product line has changed a bunch since then...)
> 
> ...derF\lieN
> 
> Neil "Fred" Picciotto --- fred at derf.net --- http://www.derf.net/
> 
> 
> 
> ************
> techtalk at linuxchix.org   http://www.linuxchix.org
> 
> 
> 

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