PCI Slot Expansion

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

>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?

Depends upon your softwae.  I'd expect it to work for most OSes.

It might not for an OS designed to run on small systems,
say an OS for embedded systems.  It might take a special configuration
flag for the software to include support for the PCI Bridge.

-- 
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California.  So are all my
other mailboxes.  Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses.
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.

hmurray@suespammers.org (Hal Murray) wrote in message news:<vra5aj7p86tf32@corp.supernews.com>...
> >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?
> 
> Depends upon your softwae.  I'd expect it to work for most OSes.
> 
> It might not for an OS designed to run on small systems,
> say an OS for embedded systems.  It might take a special configuration
> flag for the software to include support for the PCI Bridge.

I am using windows 2000, the two PCI card I am about to use is a
Display card and a FPGA based DSP card, they both have workable
driver, what I wonder is if a PCI-Bridge based slot expansion card can
make these two only ocupy one main PCI-bus slot, with out any change
of driver.

Do you know if there are any product card can do this? or any
available design for this?

Thanks 

Hui

This will work transparently without driver modification provided the driver
makes the right OS/BIOS calls to find the device, etc.

TC

"Hui Li" <huili0154@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:90934db0.0311150404.29bae2ef@posting.google.com...
> hmurray@suespammers.org (Hal Murray) wrote in message
news:<vra5aj7p86tf32@corp.supernews.com>...
> > >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?
> >
> > Depends upon your softwae.  I'd expect it to work for most OSes.
> >
> > It might not for an OS designed to run on small systems,
> > say an OS for embedded systems.  It might take a special configuration
> > flag for the software to include support for the PCI Bridge.
>
> I am using windows 2000, the two PCI card I am about to use is a
> Display card and a FPGA based DSP card, they both have workable
> driver, what I wonder is if a PCI-Bridge based slot expansion card can
> make these two only ocupy one main PCI-bus slot, with out any change
> of driver.
>
> Do you know if there are any product card can do this? or any
> available design for this?
>
> Thanks
>
> Hui

>I am using windows 2000, the two PCI card I am about to use is a
>Display card and a FPGA based DSP card, they both have workable
>driver, what I wonder is if a PCI-Bridge based slot expansion card can
>make these two only ocupy one main PCI-bus slot, with out any change
>of driver.

>Do you know if there are any product card can do this? or any
>available design for this?

PCI bridges are mature technology.  I would expect it to just work.
I know next to nothing about MS software.  There are, of course,
many ways to screwup the software.

I think I have seen PCI expansion/extender cards (mostly for testing?)
that contained a bridge chip.  If you can find one of them it
might let you test something close to your desired configuration.

Multiport Ethernet cards based on a normal ethernet chips behind
a PCI bridge chip are popular.  You might be able to borrow one
for long enough to verify that your setup at least supports PCI
bridges.

-- 
The suespammers.org mail server is located in California.  So are all my
other mailboxes.  Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicited
commercial e-mail to my suespammers.org address or any of my other addresses.
These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.

> I am using windows 2000, the two PCI card I am about to use is a
> Display card and a FPGA based DSP card, they both have workable
> driver, what I wonder is if a PCI-Bridge based slot expansion card can
> make these two only ocupy one main PCI-bus slot, with out any change
> of driver.

It should work without any problem albeit performance might degrade
somewhat.

> Do you know if there are any product card can do this? or any
> available design for this?

There are tons of cards with bridges. One example is a Bittware Hammerhead
DSP card. You can also find PMC carrier cards with bridges but to be able to
use them you would need to have your 2 cards in the PMC form factor or use
additional adapters. An example of such a card can be found here:
http://www.technobox.com/pic3673.htm

/Mikhail