5 ms·

I seem to recall really damn long cards on some early PCs, maybe XTs, but searching Wikipedia only find 16 bit ISA and VLB (much later in 486 era). Am I halluci

I seem to recall really damn long cards on some early PCs, maybe XTs, but searching Wikipedia only find 16 bit ISA and VLB (much later in 486 era). Am I hallucinating? Maybe on some server vendor stuff. Like SCSI or something? Some of them had proprietary daughterboards too.

chadcmulligan 2y ago
try "full length 8 bit ISA cards". Here's a transputer card https://www.ebay.com/itm/256438778055 https://www.ebay.com/itm/256438778055, memory and I/O cards were pretty common iirc edit: and video cards of course
- pdw 2y ago
  Yeah, you don't even need to go that exotic. E.g. an IBM CGA card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#/media/File:IBM_Color_Graphics_Adapter.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#/media/...
h2odragon 2y ago
remember these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcard
- bloopernova 2y ago
  And now hard disks plug directly into sockets on the motherboard. (Well, NVMe ones do)
  - mrguyorama 2y ago
    Disk On Module components for industrial computers have been doing this since we have had rewriteable non-volatile solid state memory.
    - h2odragon 2y ago
      I had Compact Flash cards with adapters on motherboard IDE ports on systems in 2000... i think that counts to
xgkickt 2y ago
The Performance Analyzer version of the PlayStation development board took up 3 ISA slots. Once PCI slots started to outnumber ISA slots we struggled to find motherboards for them.
chasil 2y ago
I owned an S3 local bus card of this type. It was my first computer purchase after college graduation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuBus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuBus
montjoy 2y ago
I had something like this from a temp job that was liquidating old hardware. They were Northgate PCs and they had two extended 32-bit ISA slots that were giant memory cards. I’m pretty sure the platform was i386.
Melatonic 2y ago
This comment for some reason made me think of some very long things that looked like card slots sorta but I believe took very long ribbon cables. Might be that ? No idea what they were
blihp 2y ago
Yes, some of those early cards were monsters usually due to some combination of discrete 7400-series logic (i.e. economies of scale weren't there for most ASICs yet) and memory chips (individual DIP chips as SIMM/DIMM modules weren't a thing yet) in the 8086 and into the 80268 era. I remember issues with some of the early clones not having full length/height slots causing an issue with some of those cards. By the 386 era, those monster cards had mostly died out on the desktop side at least (there were a few specialty cards that persisted into the late 80's/early 90's probably before enough customers complained about not fitting in their new system.)

chadcmulligan 2y ago

try "full length 8 bit ISA cards". Here's a transputer card https://www.ebay.com/itm/256438778055 https://www.ebay.com/itm/256438778055, memory and I/O cards were pretty common iirc edit: and video cards of course

pdw 2y ago
Yeah, you don't even need to go that exotic. E.g. an IBM CGA card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#/media/File:IBM_Color_Graphics_Adapter.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter#/media/...

h2odragon 2y ago

remember these? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardcard

bloopernova 2y ago
And now hard disks plug directly into sockets on the motherboard. (Well, NVMe ones do)
- mrguyorama 2y ago
  Disk On Module components for industrial computers have been doing this since we have had rewriteable non-volatile solid state memory.
  - h2odragon 2y ago
    I had Compact Flash cards with adapters on motherboard IDE ports on systems in 2000... i think that counts to

xgkickt 2y ago

The Performance Analyzer version of the PlayStation development board took up 3 ISA slots. Once PCI slots started to outnumber ISA slots we struggled to find motherboards for them.

chasil 2y ago

I owned an S3 local bus card of this type. It was my first computer purchase after college graduation. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuBus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NuBus

montjoy 2y ago

I had something like this from a temp job that was liquidating old hardware. They were Northgate PCs and they had two extended 32-bit ISA slots that were giant memory cards. I’m pretty sure the platform was i386.

Melatonic 2y ago

This comment for some reason made me think of some very long things that looked like card slots sorta but I believe took very long ribbon cables. Might be that ? No idea what they were

blihp 2y ago

Yes, some of those early cards were monsters usually due to some combination of discrete 7400-series logic (i.e. economies of scale weren't there for most ASICs yet) and memory chips (individual DIP chips as SIMM/DIMM modules weren't a thing yet) in the 8086 and into the 80268 era. I remember issues with some of the early clones not having full length/height slots causing an issue with some of those cards. By the 386 era, those monster cards had mostly died out on the desktop side at least (there were a few specialty cards that persisted into the late 80's/early 90's probably before enough customers complained about not fitting in their new system.)