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Grex Micros Item 99: I need help again!!! this time..it's motherboards...and ISA, EISA, and PCI!
Entered by matts on Sun Jul 10 06:14:58 UTC 1994:

okay, i have a few questions about mother noards:

okay, iknow what local bus is *good job* but what is :
ISA?
EISA?
PCI?
and various combinations of the twho..
such as
ISA/PCI
EISA/VESA
etc?
what are the orders "from most powerfull to least"
and things tlike that..
there are great price differances...from ISA to EISA/VESA and things like that
i hope some one can help me...in this state of confusion...

7 responses total.

#1 of 7 by mkoch on Wed Jul 13 14:32:54 1994:

well, I'm not going to explain what the acronyms stand for, but here is the 
diffs: PCI is the fastest, most likely will be the most used in the years to
come. Cards for PCI are just a tad more expensive than VESA cards. Next best
is VESA, common, seems on the decline though. EISA is a faster version of ISA.
Which one to buy? Cost + future orientation: PCI/ISA  got more dough?
PCI/EISA. Don't go for anything WITHOUT PCI or VESA though. Here is a good
one though (grin!) Associates Computer Supply (718-543-3364) sells a 
Pentium-90 motherboard with ISA and VESA AND PCI, never again will you have
troubles.   MIKE....

#2 of 7 by mju on Wed Jul 13 21:16:24 1994:

EISA is more than a "faster version of ISA".  It supports 32-bit
transfers and 32-bit addressing, so cards on the EISA bus can actually
see all the memory in your PC, rather than just the first 16MB.

IMHO, the idea of a Pentium motherboard with an ISA bus is sort
of silly.

#3 of 7 by mkoch on Wed Jul 20 16:53:25 1994:

Why? The ISA bus has a sustained throughput of 3 megs/sec and is dirt cheap.
What is important is that you have PCI or VESA for devices that need a large
bandwith (video / SCSI), it doesn't matter if you stick your serial card in
an ISA slot, same for a soundcard.

#4 of 7 by danr on Mon Aug 1 01:39:19 1994:

Where did you get that figure?  I've never heard anyone claim 3 Mbytes
per second sustained rate for the isa bus.

#5 of 7 by mkoch on Tue Aug 2 16:18:35 1994:

Hmm.. what was the figure you heard?

#6 of 7 by danr on Wed Aug 3 11:17:19 1994:

The figure I have is about half that.

#7 of 7 by mkoch on Wed Aug 3 17:43:49 1994:

In burst the bus is capable of 5 megs/sec, for 16 bits it should be around
3 megs/sec sustained, for 8 bits per cycle it should be half.. maybe that's
the diff? ?? Even if it is just 1.5 megs/sec sustained it's still enough
for many of the lower speed applications, such as serial I/O (which supp. is
going to change.. Access.bus, Serial SCSI, Firewire).
'

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