How much longer will PCI slots be available?
- Thread starter Gimpymoo
- Start date
A long time I suspect.
You still don't get many types of expansion cards using PCI express, and ISA* lasted until only about 4 years ago despite not having had many (any?) cards released for it for several years prior to that (PCI came out about 15 years ago, and took at least 8 years to kill off ISA).
It generally takes a long time to phase out a bus on a computer due to the number of devices (especially in businesses) that use them - many modern motherboards still have the headers for serial and parallel ports, even if they don't have the external connections as standard, you just need the standard connection** to go on either an empty expansion port or one of the push out bits on the case
This talk about old PC parts brings back some memories.
Thank god we don't have to manually configure many cards using jumpers these days (IO cards were fun, especially if you were adding new, "fast" serial ports to a machine that already had a couple of the original ones).
*I believe even those last ISA ports were still compatible with the original (8bit) ISA cards from 25 years ago
**I don't think the motherboard header has changed in nearly 20 years (I've still got a couple of the connectors in my box from where they came with cards in the days before you had serial/parallel ports as standard on many motherboards).
You still don't get many types of expansion cards using PCI express, and ISA* lasted until only about 4 years ago despite not having had many (any?) cards released for it for several years prior to that (PCI came out about 15 years ago, and took at least 8 years to kill off ISA).
It generally takes a long time to phase out a bus on a computer due to the number of devices (especially in businesses) that use them - many modern motherboards still have the headers for serial and parallel ports, even if they don't have the external connections as standard, you just need the standard connection** to go on either an empty expansion port or one of the push out bits on the case
This talk about old PC parts brings back some memories.
Thank god we don't have to manually configure many cards using jumpers these days (IO cards were fun, especially if you were adding new, "fast" serial ports to a machine that already had a couple of the original ones).
*I believe even those last ISA ports were still compatible with the original (8bit) ISA cards from 25 years ago
**I don't think the motherboard header has changed in nearly 20 years (I've still got a couple of the connectors in my box from where they came with cards in the days before you had serial/parallel ports as standard on many motherboards).
Soldato
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in terms of the way things developed, having on-board serial/parallel ports was a relatively new thing (introduced with the ATX standard (1995), the backplate of an AT board, having nothing more than a keyboard socket)
So, given the way things are headed. With the removal of serial/parallel ports, the dropping of the ide interface... seems motherboards are going a little retro *smirk*
So, given the way things are headed. With the removal of serial/parallel ports, the dropping of the ide interface... seems motherboards are going a little retro *smirk*