[MLB-WIRELESS] Mini PCs (slightly OT) -PC104-esk stupid question.

[Donovan Baarda]

Gabrielle Harrison & Paul van den Bergen wrote:
> On Fri, 20 May 2005 12:33:04 +0100, Donovan Baarda  
> <abo at minkirri.apana.org.au> wrote:
> 
>> PC104 is ISA on a stackable header. The cards are around 10cm square 
>> (or  was that 12cm?). It's kinda old now, and I believe there is now 
>> compact  PCI, which is a PCI equivalent.
> 
> 
> What I have never got a handle on is why the backplane? or rather, how  
> does the back plane work? if you just buy the P104 board, do you need a 
> PC  to stick it in (I (mis-)recall Amigas working like this for CPU  
> upgrades???)? or are there stand-alone backboards (powered comms bus 
> type  thingie)?

With PC104 there is no backplane. You simply stack the boards one on top 
of each other. each board has a header on one side, and pins on the 
other. Note that as this is ISA, it is single master, so you have a 
single CPU board, and stack IO cards on top.

It is possible that some PC104 boards also have another interface that 
does use a backplane. Quite a few have an ISA edge connector as well as 
PC104 headers, allowing you also use normal ISA cards with an ISA backplane.

-- 
Donovan Baarda

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