"I want to die peacefully and in my sleep like my grandfather, not screaming and in panic like the passengers of his bus" - seen on IRC
A WEEK AGO, the guys at the PCI SIG (PCI Special Interest Group), the group responsible for governing the PCI bus and supported by industry heavyweights like Intel, AMD and Nvidia quietly announced
( http://www.pcisig.com/news_room/news...es/2004_04_19/) the
availability of PCI bus specification version 3.0, that for the first time breaks compatibility with older cards.
According to the group, version 3 "maintains compatibility with version 2.3 and completes the migration to 3.3V". What they are saying, in other words, is that if you just bought a great PCI card on eBay, it may or might not work on future PCI 3.0 slots, because the new spec requires motherboard and card manufacturers to eliminate support for 5v-only PCI cards.
While one analyst is quoted as saying "The new specification should have little impact on the industry, because the older 5V cards make up only a tiny fraction of today's devices", with a quick Google search one is able to find dozens of 5v-only PCI cards.
Five volt, 32-bit, 33 Mhz PCI cards range from inexpensive PCMCIA readers like this one to expensive gear like this T1/E1 telephony interface card, currently selling for $1,495 apiece.
The PCI SIG notes that dual voltage (5v and 3.3v) cards will continue to work on PCI 3.0 motherboards -at 3.3v-: "Universal keyed add-in cards (cards that are keyed for both 5.0V and 3.3V slots) continue to be supported by the Conventional PCI 3.0 spec".
So if you thought - like me - that one of the beauties of the PC was the PCI cards' backwards compatibility, that allowed me for instance to install a 3com Etherlink PCI ethernet card made in 1996 on a motherboard developed in 2003, you're going to be disappointed.
The old "trick" of taking your old PCI cards and moving them over and over to each new system upgrade, is over. Sadly, heavyweights like Intel and Microsoft thrive with "planned obsolescence", so the revenue stream increase is directly proportional to how often you have to throw away your hardware and start over.
For more info and links:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15569
Source:
The INQ!
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