Interfacing Standards
3.1 Introduction
The type of interface card used greatly affects the performance of a PC system. Early models of PCs relied on expansion options to improve their specification. These expansion options were cards that plugged into an expansion bus. Eight slots were usually available and these added memory, video, fixed and floppy disk controllers, printer output, modem ports, serial communications and so on.
There are eight main types of interface busses available for the PC. The number of data bits they handle at a time determines their classification. They are:
| • PC (8-bit) | ISA (16-bit) |
| • EISA (32-bit) | MCA (32-bit) |
| • VL-Local Bus (32-bit) | PCI bus (32/64-bit) |
| • SCSI (16/32-bit) | PCMCIA (16-bit) |
3.2 PC bus
The PC bus uses the architecture ...
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