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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.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

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