[Sussex] Whats the difference?

[John D.]

John Crowhurst wrote:

>On Sun, February 20, 2005 22:27, John D. said:
>  
>
>>Amongst other things, I've been dreaming about the possibility of
>>getting a barebones system and then customising some of the components.
>>    
>>
>
>You'd be better off getting seperate components and building your own
>'barebones' system.
>
>  
>
>>As far as I can see, most of the barebones systems available are pretty
>>garbage i.e. trendy cube models which seem to lack expansion.
>>    
>>
>
>This is the trend, go for systems that have as much onboard as the user
>could possibly want, then add a single AGP and PCI slot for the expansion
>boards.
>
>  
>
>>Ideally, lots of pci slots would enable me to "play" to my hearts
>>content, but now the buggers seems to be changing the ball game (again).
>>
>>I see that the latest standards of graphic card interface is PCI-x(16x),
>>but I also have read reference to  "normal"  PCI-x slots and  PCI spdif
>>out slots
>>    
>>
>
>PCI-x is backward compatible with the old PCI standard, its a much longer
>slot size. The top end of PCI-x is 32 times faster than PCI-33.
>
>spidif (Sony/Philips Digital Interface) is a sound connector, it could be
>a phono plug or an optical connector.
>
>PCI Express (PCIe) is the standard that isn't backward compatible, it has
>a very small footprint. PCI Express uses serial communication rather than
>parallel.
>
and

Alan Pope wrote:

On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 22:27:39 +0000, John D.
<john at johnsemail.eclipse.co.uk> wrote:

>Whats the difference between the latter and are they compatible in anyway?
>
>  
>

There's a whole bucketload of information about this on the PCI
Special Interest Group website.. http://www.pcisig.com/specifications
is a good place to start..

Ok John that makes things considerably clearer and thanks for the link 
Alan I'll look at that now (though how much will go in one eye and out 
the other ear, the old grey matters sort of stuffed full of "SAMBA 
howto" at the moment.

Again, thanks V much both.

regards

John D.