28 Jun
2006
28 Jun
'06
10:05 p.m.
On 6/29/2006 at 5:25 AM Jules Richardson wrote:
It's interesting though how MCA and EISA died out,
but VLB (briefly) and
PCI did so well. The latter two both required new boards, but there didn't
seem to be a lot of complaints amongst users.
I think it wasn't that PCI "did so well", but rather that the need for plug
in cards decreased dramatically.
Consider that right about when PCI began appearing on Pentium-class
machines (I know it made an appearance late in the 486 game, but it wasn't
as common as all-ISA or ISA/VLB 486 systems), motherboard integration of
peripherals had gotten underway, so the need for lots of cards wasn't
there.
Contrast the typical 386 with its display, hard/floppy cards (with serial
and parallel ports) where basically everything except CPU and memory was on
cards.
Pentiums pretty much started out with IDE, floppy, serial and parallel
already on the motherboard. Some had display, sound and network adapters
there too, and a few even had SCSI. The need for add-in cards dropped
dramatically. I suspect that most PCI cards sold are display or sound or
network adapters. At some point, I predict that many desktop systems will
take the form of something that looks like the Mac Mini--everything that
you need in a small box with no expandability except for USB and maybe
Firewire. Should cut costs significantly.
Cheers,
Chuck