tuner in graphic card slot ?

[siliconaudio]

V_J ---

I have an 'el cheapo' and rather dated ECS A880GM-M7 motherboard with an AMD 820 4-core CPU onboard running as my streaming server. The motherboard has 2 PCI, 1 PCIe x1, and 1 PCIe x16 slots on-board.

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Product...19&LanID=0

As for the other stuff, I have no clue what you mean --- the 'shared PCI lanes" and the "shared IRQ lines" have always slightly confused me

What can you tell me about this board that might explain my issues ?

Just a quick note on IRQ lines vs PCIe lanes...

An IRQ line is an Interrupt ReQuest line. In the PCI days (and earlier the ISA days), it was a physical connection that would "interrupt" the processor to tell it that the device needed to be serviced. Preferably each device in your computer had it's own dedicated IRQ, but in the days of old, these were in short supply, and not all devices played nice when sharing the same IRQ. In the PCIe world, there are no more physical IRQ lines, instead the interrupt request is a packet generated by the device and sent down the PCIe lanes.

Before PCIe (PCI express), all the slots on your motherboard were parallel interfaces. That changed with PCIe. PCIe is a bunch of serial lines, called "lanes". Technically, just one lane is all any device needs to connect to your computer, however, some devices, such as video cards, need way more data than can be carried on a single lane, so lanes are bundled together to pass more traffic. Think of it like a multi-lane highway. Traffic could travel down a single lane highway, but you can get more traffic flowing with more lanes.

Therefore a single lane device should technically be able to work in any PCIe slot. It just doesn't use all the lanes. For home PCs, most devices that aren't video cards are single lane. In servers, you will often find RAID controllers or high speed LAN cards that are 4 or 8 lane. But PCIe is essentially a serial interface, usually with 1, 4, 8 or 16 lanes per slot (mostly just 1x and 16x in home PCs).

Class is excused

Bill.

[ElihuRozen]

Just a quick note on IRQ lines vs PCIe lanes...

An IRQ line is an Interrupt ReQuest line. In the PCI days (and earlier the ISA days), it was a physical connection that would "interrupt" the processor to tell it that the device needed to be serviced. Preferably each device in your computer had it's own dedicated IRQ, but in the days of old, these were in short supply, and not all devices played nice when sharing the same IRQ. In the PCIe world, there are no more physical IRQ lines, instead the interrupt request is a packet generated by the device and sent down the PCIe lanes.

Before PCIe (PCI express), all the slots on your motherboard were parallel interfaces. That changed with PCIe. PCIe is a bunch of serial lines, called "lanes". Technically, just one lane is all any device needs to connect to your computer, however, some devices, such as video cards, need way more data than can be carried on a single lane, so lanes are bundled together to pass more traffic. Think of it like a multi-lane highway. Traffic could travel down a single lane highway, but you can get more traffic flowing with more lanes.

Therefore a single lane device should technically be able to work in any PCIe slot. It just doesn't use all the lanes. For home PCs, most devices that aren't video cards are single lane. In servers, you will often find RAID controllers or high speed LAN cards that are 4 or 8 lane. But PCIe is essentially a serial interface, usually with 1, 4, 8 or 16 lanes per slot (mostly just 1x and 16x in home PCs).

Class is excused

Bill.

Is this going to be on the test? Is the test going to be open-book?