VLB SCSI?

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Sat Oct 27 12:15:38 2001

I'm not sure what you mean by slower. I found that no matter how fast the mfg
claims the CPU is running, it does DOS tasks about as fast as a 133 MHz Pentium,
and I also found that the difference in performance between these VIP boards at
133 MHz (not for comparison, but just for reference) and the 150 MHz 6x86's that
I was using back in '92..'94, was not perceptible. The 6x86 boards were
equipped with ISA and PCI, but no VLB, BTW.

I suppose someone will eventually build a motherboard that runs fast enough so
that when the PCI peripheral interface fails it still saves time to power down
the system, swap the offending device, and restart, but that time isn't here
yet.

It's true that it's possible to build a faster interface on PCI than on VLB.
That doesn't mean that the makers of a given circuit did that, however. I doubt
that a motherboard designed with both VLB and PCI is necessarily slower than one
with PCI only. The VLB is more tightly coupled to the CPU than is the PCI,
which is capable of running both faster and slower than the CPU without ill
effects, while the VLB did force the CPU to match its rate when it was doing
buisness with it. If you stop and think about it, the CPU has to synchronize
with the process that's running on the I/O bus anyway, so it's the process rate
that effects the CPU speed, not the bus on which it's happening. Of course the
clock effects the timing increment ... however minute that might be.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: "Chad Fernandez" <fernande_at_internet1.net>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2001 8:08 AM
Subject: Re: VLB SCSI?


> Dick,
>
> If I recall correctly, waaaayy back in the mid 90s :-), I heard that the
> VLB/PCI boards were slower than a board with one or the other combined
> with ISA. Have you, or anyone else experienced that? This thread
> reminded me of a friend in collage, who at the time was trying to decide
> if he wanted to get PCI or VLB. I said, why not get a MB with both, and
> he said that they weren't as fast as a motherboard with only one or the
> other.
>
> Chad Fernandez
> Michigan, USA
>
> Richard Erlacher wrote:
> >
> > My Mom still uses one that's hot-rodded up to 160MHz and has 64MB of RAM.
It
> > behaves pretty well, hence, she's not dumb enough to want a new one.
> >
> > I've got a Pentium board with 3 VLB and 3 PCI. That's about right, I think,
but
> > I'd surely like to get the ~1994 BIOS updated.
> >
> > Dick
>
>
Received on Sat Oct 27 2001 - 12:15:38 BST