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Re: PCI slots



At 02:08 PM 1/15/97 -0500, Dunlap, Randy wrote:
>I am looking for PCs (x86 CPUs) with a minimum of 6 slots,
>preferably more.  If anyone has knowledge or information
>on this subject, please email me or the pci-sig reflector.

More that 4 slots requires a PCI bridge, as the PCI bus only allows 10
loads, the host bridge uses one load, the ISA/IDE bridge uses another, and
each slot requires 2 loads.  If there are additional PCI peripherals on the
motherboard (such as a PCI scsi interface) this reduces the number of
available loads.  There are motherboards out there that violate this spec...
I wouldn't use them. Furthermore, the common triton family of PCIchipsets
only supports arbitration on 4 masters.

Just happened to notice a new motherboard from SuperMicro with dual P6's and
8 PCI slots (plus 3 ISA slots).  4 of these PCI slots are behind a i960RP
coprocessor-bridge.  Presumably this is setup as a straight bridge by
default, the data sheet says something about it running a WindRiver rtos or
some such..

This puppy looks like it will require a custom case as the additional 4
slots are about where the power supply would normally be.

http://www.supermicro.com   I think it was the P6DNE or something similar.

-jrp
è|k