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Re: On The Face + other all-in-one chip
On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, Schlomo Schapiro wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I thought EISA is dead ! What's the use of EISA if you have PCI ???
> Do you know a board-maker that uses this chip ?
> (And for that and Israeli reseller ?)
Dear Schlomo, EISA is the 'Extended Industry Standard Architecture'. Pay
attention to the fact that 'Industry' does not mean
Microsoft+Intel+Cyrix+2 others.
While the PC industry has been pushing EISA out, not because it is
unusable, but because it wants to sell you new and fascinating things, the
industrial PC industry is busily making boards with up to 16 EISA slots.
The reason is, that excepting high end video and audio applications, and
high speed disk and network interfaces, PCI is overkill. There are no
modems, EPROM programmers, industrial control interfaces, or other stuff
people poke into their PCs with PCI. Maybe there will be, but there are
none now, and the Industrial PC market does not deal in futures, unlike
the lemming PC industry.
EISA will not be dead when columnists declare it dead, it will be dead
when industry will stop supporting it officially. Even then, there will be
someone who will build EISA slots into his mark XVIII Hyper-PC, in the
hope, to attract a few more buyers by increased compatibility.
FYI, EISA and VLB are the 2 bus standards that can be interfaced to
without using special chipsets by anyone. You can't do that with PCI.
And the fact that EISA cannot share IRQs is a myth. A correctly designed
board, such as those used in modem racks for example, can have all 16
modems on one IRQ if required (but usually they are spread and a RISC
chip takes care of serving them). The only real limitation is the address
space. And most EISA card designs can be modified to run as fast as 66 MHz
bus speed (33 MHz data speed at 16 bits - 66 MB/sec).
As to the SiS, it is advertised on a board, in a comparison between
various boards, in the December 'Computer Shopper' issue. There were
several boards compared. I will look it up, and send you the address and
the price. It is probably cheaper now.
I know that in Germany where you come from, people frown upon EIDE and
EISA. They also earn twice as much money in the same position, as we do. I
can understand that.
Do not forget that a PCI bus cycle is more complex than an EIDE cycle. We
have talked about this before. At equal technology and cost, EIDE must be
faster. It is being pushed out for marketing reasons, nothing else.
>
> Schlomo
>
> On Thu, 5 Feb 1998, Peter L. Peres wrote:
>
> >
> > There is another new all-in-one chip from SiS. It is new. Has SVGA (don't
> > know which), 2xserial, 2xparallel, USB, 4xEIDE on it. It is rather large
> > but cheaper than multi-chipset solutions. It also looks weird, green with
> > cooling fins built in.
> >
> > You add ram and a processor. Drives PCI and EISA buses. Takes Pentium and
> > Cyrix and K6 if I'm not wrong.
> >
> > Machines based on this chip looked 20% cheaper than their counterparts at
> > sensibly identical performance (source: Computer Buyer - UK, December 97).
> >
> > imho the capability to change the processor is important for users who
> > want to be able to upgrade.
> >
> > I do not know if Xfree86 supports its SVGA driver, the rest should not be
> > a problem. Anyone tried this ?
> >
> > Peter
> >
> >
> >
>
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