Re: PCI Expansion Hardware

[Steve Glaser <glaser@hpn.lkg.dec.com>]

There are evaluation boards available for most of the Digital bridge
chips.  For details see:

http://ftp.digital.com/pub/Digital/info/semiconductor/literature/dsc-library.html

Documentation is available online in Postscript and PDF format for both
the chips and the evaluation boards.

I'm not sure whether these would be appropriate for product use in that
evaluation boards might tend to go end-of-life before the chips do
(i.e. when there are newer chips available that do the job better,
nobody would use the older chips in a new design so the evaluation
board is of limited utility -- even though the older chips will
continue to be made for quite a while).

Steve Glaser (glaser@lkg.dec.com)


    Chas,

    Digital Equipment Corp sells an "evaluation" board for their PCI to
    PCI bridge products.   It's called the 21150 PCI to PCI Bridge
    Evaluation Board.  It is basically what you described.  It has a
    21150 P2P Bridge ASIC on it, 4 PCI slots comming off the secodary
    PCI bus, and a single male PCI connector designed to plug into a
    PCI slot.  The rest of the board is just some resistors, caps, and
    a series of switch blocks for doing experiments.

    We ordered a couple from DEC so that we could do certain types of
    compatibility testing in our labs.  (Basically to simulate what you
    DON'T want to buy, which is the expansion chassis, etc.   We hooked
    a couple of these together to get multiple levels of P2P's so that
    we could test our BIOS....)

    Anyway, seems like what you need.   I don't remember the pricing,
    it was not cheap for what you got.

    The DEC number for ordering is:

    Model Number    Revision        Description
    QR-21A50-12     1.0             21150 Design Kit


    This comes with the board that you want, and spice models for Alpha
    (who cares), marketing data sheets, and a floppy diskette (which I have
    never used).

    Anyway,

    Have fun...

    David O'Shea 
    daveo@corollary.com

    At 05:50 PM 1/3/97 -0500, Chas Horvath wrote:
    >I am looking for a board that plugs into a PCI slot, has a PCI-to-PCI
    >bridge (plus what ever other support logic is needed) and then has 3 or
    >more PCI slots.  Mechanically this board would plug into a PCI slot
    >on a motherboard, stick up into the air, and have a number of PCI
    >slots on it.
    >
    >I am aware of products from Bit3 and Magma that logically accomplish
    >this task but they are more complicated and expensive than what I need.
    >Specifically they supply a PCI board for the host with a special
    >interface, a cable, another board for an expansion chassis, and an expansion
    >chassis.
    >
    >We have a lot of mechanical flexibility on the product we are working on
    >and want something much simplier (and less costly), basically a single
    >board with a PCI connector on its edge, a PCI-to-PCI bridge, and PCI slots. 
    >We don't want cables, additional circuitry to buffer the PCI bus across a
    >cable, etc.
    >
    >Does anyone know of any product(s) fitting this description?
ÒÈ	¸