At 02:12 PM 9/30/03 +0200, you wrote:
On Mon, Sep 29, 2003 at 04:11:45PM -0400, Joe wrote:
> what
'passive backplane' should do?
There's no active components on the "backplane". OK there mayu be a few
LEDs of something to show presense of power but no vital components vital
to the system. The S-100 backplanes are a good example. The CPU, system
memory, video circuits, I/O ports etc are all on plug in cards.
ok, but can i safely assume that connector between this board
and backplane is a normal ISA bus and stick it into a strange ISA...
Yes you can assume that it's a standard ISA connector if it looks ike
one. There are some cards that have an extra connector but those will be
obvious.* BUT even if it has a standard ISA connector you can not just plug
it into a standard motherboard that already has CPU and memory. If you do,
you will be connecting the outputs of the memory, CPU etc on one board to
the outputs of memory, CPU etc of the other board. If any of the outputs
are not in the same logic state (hi or Lo), and it's a near certainty that
they're not, then they will try to force the other outputs and WILL burn up
something. I didn't see the first part of this thread so I don't know the
details of the card that you have. If it's a CPU or memory card, don't try
to use it in a computer with a motherboard! If it's an I/O card then it's
probably safe to use with a motherboard.
hm, splitter? (don't know the proper word, it has
one male ISA edge
connector, two female ISA sockets and three decoupling capacitors)
with wires from PSU connected to the proper bus pins?
In the PC industry those are usually called riser cards. They plug into
the motherboard and stick up and you can plug several standard PC cards
into them. The PC cards will then lay parallel to the motherboard instead
of perpendicular as in the orginal PCs. That style system is called NTX.
But to answer your question, yes you can make you own passive backplane
using a riser card. Some backplanes have the keyboard and reset signals
routed through them but most of the CPU cards for those systems can get the
keyboard signals via the backplane or through some kind of wiring adapater
that runs directly from the CPU card to the keyboard port in the case.
BTW where are you located? I have some extra backplanes here (Florida).
I can probably send you one.
*FWIW a lot of the passive backplane systems use cards with an extra
connector similar to the old VLB cards. They call it PICMIG. I don't know
the details of it.
Joe