27 Oct
2001
27 Oct
'01
11:28 a.m.
The fact the EISA motherboards were so expensive limited its market penetration.
The VLB was cheaper and I think the connectors had a lot to do with that, since
they were already in volume use on MicroChannel. VLB was also quite a bit
better-designed and better suited to the then popular '486 market. One would
have anticipated much better acceptance of the EISA, due to its inherent ability
to capitalize on existing ISA products, but between cost of the motherboards
hardware and the fancy connectors, they simply didn't hit the price range. EISA
was, by the time the Pentiums came out, pretty much a dead duck. It hadn't
caught on with the '386's and it didn't do better in the '486 market. PCI
was
clearly better by the time Pentiums became common. The only reason VLB lived as
long as it did was that there were considerable numbers of boards out there that
were still purported to be supported by the same folks that made the
motherboards. They solved the marketing problem by putting the essential
peripherals on the motherboard, which signalled the end of the VLB.
Dick
----- Original Message -----
From: "Iggy Drougge" <optimus(a)canit.se>
To: "Richard Erlacher" <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2001 12:00 AM
Subject: Re: VLB SCSI?
Richard Erlacher skrev:
The combination of VLB and PCI apparently is the
only way you can use fast
ethernet together with solid, reliable, proven SCSI. ISA doesn't support
fast ethernet, and from what I've seen, neither does VLB, though those 2842's
are hard to beat. The 2940's surely don't do the job. I've still got about
75 of them out there that I visit from time to time, and their owners are, in
nearly all cases loath to part with them. They give little or no trouble,
all but half a dozen or so are running Win95 or 98 with few complaints. That
one particular board seems to have had the formula.
A friend of mine has got an ISA 100Mb ethernet card made by HP. I'm quite
jealous. OTOH, I've got an Olicom 100Mb MCA ethernet card. ^___^
BTW, what about EISA? When the Pentium was really new, and PCI really wasn't
on the market, or at least not a force to be reckoned with due to lack of
hardware, all high-end Pentium machines had EISA, often in addition to PCI.
And there certainly is a big amount of high-end SCSI cards for EISA, and they
still fetch quite a good price. The number of 100Mb ethernet EISA cards is not
negligible either.
--
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