isa vs pci

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Girgath

I am looking through a book that says there are 2 kinds of NIC cards. PIC
and ISA... what the hell is an isa card? is it the same as AGP, am I
confused about something perhaps...? Please reply soon as I need this info
for later today.

Geoff
 
From: "Girgath" (e-mail address removed)
Date: 04/13/2004 3:28 PM Eastern Daylight Time
Message-id: <%bXec.101899$Pk3.68840@pd7tw1no>

I am looking through a book that says there are 2 kinds of NIC cards. PIC
and ISA... what the hell is an isa card? is it the same as AGP, am I
confused about something perhaps...? Please reply soon as I need this info
for later today.

Geoff
Click to expand...

No, it's not the same as AGP. ISA is older technology than PCI. If you have a
newer PC (3-4 yrs old or newer, roughly) you probably don't have any ISA slots.
 
what is the difference physically between the ISA and PCI, I know that the
PCI slot is white and that it has 1 slit in it.... is the ISA straight
across without any slits? and what does the slot look like (color)? I think
I might actually have an ISA modem infront of me...
 
Girgath said:
I am looking through a book that says there are 2 kinds of NIC cards.
PIC and ISA... what the hell is an isa card? is it the same as AGP,
am I confused about something perhaps...? Please reply soon as I
need this info for later today.

Geoff
Click to expand...

Ahhh the old ISA slots. ISA is ancient - you obviously haven't been
computing very long or you'd know about it. ISA was pre PCI. I have several
boards with all-ISA slots and several with half and half. If you're reading
a book that mentions ISA then it must be pretty ancient! I don't think you
can buy ISA cards these days!

AGP = Accelerated Graphics Port. Brought in several years ago (I can't
recall the exact year boards with AGP slots started appearing). You can't
stick a NIC in an AGP port!
 
the book I am reading is directed at selling networking equipment to people.
So the fact that their computer may be older than 4.5 years is important.
So how could a dumb customer look inside their computer and see whether they
need an ISA or PCI? And I assure you the company I work for still does sell
ISA network cards.
 
Girgath said:
the book I am reading is directed at selling networking equipment to people.
So the fact that their computer may be older than 4.5 years is important.
So how could a dumb customer look inside their computer and see whether they
need an ISA or PCI? And I assure you the company I work for still does sell
ISA network cards.
Click to expand...

People are learning less and less about their computers as each month passes. For example, my first "real"
computer, an IBM PS2, had many instructions in it, including several pages on floppy disks, including several
diagrams describing tracks and sectors and the like. Nowadays computers barely come with a piece of paper telling
you not to throw it into the bathtub with you.

As the market increases in size, a smaller percentage of users are enthusiasts as were before, with a corresponding
increase in the number of people who never bother to learn about a computer.

That's how it looks from here at least..

Jon
 
Girgath said:
I am looking through a book that says there are 2 kinds of NIC cards. PIC
and ISA... what the hell is an isa card? is it the same as AGP, am I
confused about something perhaps...? Please reply soon as I need this info
for later today.
Click to expand...

ISA cards were used before the PCI bus was developed. They are usually
black as opposed to the white PCI slots, and are about 30% longer. They
are still much used in industrial and development applications. Very few
PCI modems are of the "hardware" type, whereas most of the ISA ones were.
It's interesting to note that an ISA card to provide extra parallel or
serial ports cost about half of what a PCI one costs.

Because of the industrial uses, several motherboard makers are producing
high-end boards with one or more ISA slots. I just wish I could afford one!

AGP cards are used for video to achieve a higher speed connection to
the CPU than that used by the PCI bus.

Virg Wall
 
ISA was once the standard for expansion cards. It was mostly replaced by PCI because PCI is much faster. (PCI may be replaced by PCI Express, which is even faster.) Most PCs use only PCI slots plus one AGP slot for video. Motherboards with ISA slots are still available if you need them e.g. for proprietary ISA cards or for your old modem and sound cards.
 
The last computers that used a combo of ISA and PCI were the Super Socket 7
motherboards which had about three of each plus an AGP slot. You can still
get modern motherboards with ISA slots which are only useful if you have
some old card that you really need for some function. There was even a newer
motherboard by Soyo which had three ISA slots but it was expensive. The
old 386's and 486's didn't have PCI slots which seemed to come in with the
first Pentium computers.
 
ProfGene said:
The last computers that used a combo of ISA and PCI were the Super
Socket 7 motherboards which had about three of each plus an AGP slot.
Click to expand...

Not quite true. There are a hell of a lot of Slot 1 and Socket 370
motherboards out there with ISA slots. I have both here, one of them running
a 1Ghz CPU and an ISA SCSI card for my scanner.
 
Girgath said:
the book I am reading is directed at selling networking equipment to
people. So the fact that their computer may be older than 4.5 years
is important. So how could a dumb customer look inside their computer
and see whether they need an ISA or PCI? And I assure you the
company I work for still does sell ISA network cards.
Click to expand...

As a rule, ISA slots tended to be black. (A lot of PCI slots are white) They
are about 50% longer than PCI slots and tend to be on the left side of the
motherboard, furthest away from the CPU. Old tech, very slow bus. I'm fairly
sure you're limited to 10Base-T cards in an ISA slot, the bus isn't fast
enough to support 10/100 cards.
 
For you, it is simple. If selling equipment and one need
know what ISA is, then customer must buy new everything. The
differences between PCI and ISA are so major that you could be
reading for most of the next hour.

If a customer cannot tell difference between ISA and PCI,
then customer has woefully too little knowledge to install the
NIC. Sell him the PCI and don't look back. If it does not
work for him, then he probably needs a whole new computer
system.
 
Not quite true. There are a hell of a lot of Slot 1 and Socket 370
motherboards out there with ISA slots. I have both here, one of them running
a 1Ghz CPU and an ISA SCSI card for my scanner.
Click to expand...

Yep, they were still pretty common on early Athlon and Tualatin supportive
boards too even if being phased out at that point.
 
For you, it is simple. If selling equipment and one need
know what ISA is, then customer must buy new everything. The
differences between PCI and ISA are so major that you could be
reading for most of the next hour.

If a customer cannot tell difference between ISA and PCI,
then customer has woefully too little knowledge to install the
NIC. Sell him the PCI and don't look back. If it does not
work for him, then he probably needs a whole new computer
system.
Click to expand...

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it), even a
relatively cluess user, given a PCI or ISA NIC, could be instructed to
unplug the PC and figure out how to install the card... after installing
it windows will detect it and they shove a floppy disk into the drive,
and given that windows defaults to TCP/IP installation it'd work more
often than not. Biggest issue might be that upon every boot it may be
waiting for a DHCP server where there is none.

It's not really necessary to buy newer equipment though, an ISA NIC is
quite adequate for broadband internet service, even higher-compression
multimedia over LAN.

These days it could even be cost-effective to simply send BOTH versions of
the NIC, ISA and PCI, if there is any doubt... NICs are a dime a dozen
now, practically about $1 in volume, and any time spent troubleshooting
one or returning it due to incompatibility of the ISA/PCI slot would
likely be more expensive than the 2nd NIC.
 
Not following the thread, but has anyone confused him yet with VESA cards or
EISA card? How about Microchannel? AGP-Pro? PCI-X (which is different than
PCI Express)? Then there's cardbus and PCMCIA..

....and I haven't touch other hardware platforms like Mac (Nubus, etc....)

: )
 
Here is a rather nice picture of my rather old motherboard
which I eventually found/manager to identify,
after 5 years of having the PC!!

The ISA are the long black ones on the left. I don't think the
colour matter much though, they could be red with greeen spots
on *unless* the colour is specified in the standard.

PS Anyone know what the slot near the top middle marked
'FEATURE' is (near the slot marked 'FLOPPY')

I dont think mine is used but I cant see and it is dark in there
and last time I messed around with cables etc I got beebs on
boot up!!.
'
 
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