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Performance of ISA/PCI Backplanes?

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First post, by ericmackrodt

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Hello everyone,

I'm a bit curious about something and I haven't found much information on the internet, so I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone has any idea.
I have a couple of computers that use SBCs on ISA blackplanes, mostly 386 and 486 computers.

I noticed that there are some backplanes with PCI slots and they usually have a chipset that I imagine is some sort of pci controller, like this one:

https://www.digikey.com.au/en/products/detail … ASABEgKwB_D_BwE

What I'm wondering is, would those PCI slots work the same and have the same speed as PCI slots in normal motherboards?

I imagine that if you are using a VBL backplane with a 486, it would probably be similar but if you are using just a normal ISA backplane it would be a lot slower (assuming it would work at all).
But I have no way to test it as I don't have one of those backplanes or a VBL SBC.

Does anyone have any experience with them that would help with my curiosity?

Thanks in advance!

Reply 1 of 2, by eisapc

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The link shows a backplane for PCI/ISA SBCs. The SBCs have the PCI bus behind the ISA slot.

There is like VLB no way to get a PCI bus attached to the ISA bus, nor does it make any sense.
Instead PCI to ISA bridges were used on allmost any PCI mainboard.

Reply 2 of 2, by luckybob

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it isnt a chipset. its just a simple pci-pci bridge. its is how PCI works. You only get 4 "real" PCI slots. Everything else is done with bridges (effectively) just like USB hubs. you still only get 133MB/s total across all PCI slots.

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. - Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam

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