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[ PCI Bus ] cable

M

Mariusz Grad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi.

Is there any chance to make "cable" for PCI slot ?
For example putting PCI external I/O controller into seperate case and link
it with special "cable" to mother case ?
It would look like "making longer bus."

Resitance should be small enought - what about lenght ?

Thank You.
 
M

Michael

Jan 1, 1970
0
[email protected] (Mariusz Grad) wrote in
Hi.

Is there any chance to make "cable" for PCI slot ?
For example putting PCI external I/O controller into seperate case and
link it with special "cable" to mother case ?
It would look like "making longer bus."

Resitance should be small enought - what about lenght ?

Thank You.

They have exactly what you're talking about here:
http://www.adexelec.com/pci32.htm

Michael
 
M

Mac

Jan 1, 1970
0
Hi.

Is there any chance to make "cable" for PCI slot ?
For example putting PCI external I/O controller into seperate case and link
it with special "cable" to mother case ?
It would look like "making longer bus."

Resitance should be small enought - what about lenght ?

Thank You.

The short answer is that what you want to do is not very likely to work.
There may be a way to accomplish what you want, but it will be more
complicated (and expensive) than just running a cable from one box to
another. Read on for a fuller explanation.

You can't just stretch a PCI bus indefinitely and expect it to work.
Technically, there is no gaurantee that it will work if you stretch it at
all, but in practice, a couple of inches seems to be tolerable on a 33 MHz
bus. I would be VERY surprised if you could run a 10" cable from a PCI
slot to a PCI device and have it still work reliably. The reason for this
is that the data and address lines have setup times, and if you add delay
and reduce signal integrity, the chances of meeting all times is greatly
reduced.

Also, not all the signals going to a PCI slot are parallel. For example,
each slot gets an independent PCI clock. And the four interrupts are
typically routed in a rotating fashion. (That is, the first slot gets ABCD
in order, and the second slot gets DABC, the third slot gets CDAB, etc.)
What this means is that you could not connect more than one device at the
end of a cable, even if the cable is short.

There are chips which, basically, translate PCI to something else and send
it to another chassis, where it is translated back to PCI. These devices
work by looking like PCI bridges. They can create a whole new bus segment
in a different chassis. I can't point you to an example, but I know a
company called stargen was working on something like this at one time, and
I'm sure there are others. In some cases, the cable can be many meters
long.

Good luck.

Mac
 
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