I want to design a pci board which will expand one pci slot through a pci-bridge and pci-local bus and get two slot. I wonder if there is any driver problem? say i plug a audio card into the expanded slot?
thanks
Hui
There *shouldn't* be a problem (given a competent bridge design), but if it's a CL sound card I wouldn't expect it to work in a perfect system.
Thank you, do you know if there are any cots cards to do this? or any design available?
Hui
No, sorry. I know PCI cards that combine functions this way, and boards that have PCI-PCI bridges for more slots. The mechanics of an add=in-card to expand slots seems a little funky.
Maybe I misunderstood this question...but wouldn't the cheap way out be to buy a motherboard with more slots?
It's because I am making a product, I hope to combine two card into one, so to make the product slimer, look better and meet more situation.
hui
You *should* be able to do this. Certainly you must have a PCI- PCI bridge from a reliable source. As long as you're not doing slots, things should be fairly straight forward. I've seen cards that do this (the ADA-3780, being one example). Of course testing with an infinite number of system configurations might put a crimp in your style.
I'd highly recommend "PCI System Architecture", by Shanley and Anderson. It's available on-line (though not free) on their website:
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