P6EX-A+ User’s Manual
1:
Package & Product Information – 1.6
Component Information
This section is a brief description of the components on the
mainboard that you might need to know about if you want to
upgrade or change your system configuration. If your mainboard
is already installed in a system, it isn’t necessary for you to re-
view this section.
This mainboard uses the Mini-ATX ‘form factor’ in a design
that integrates many features and ports onto the board.
Expansion Slots
The mainboard has seven standard expansion slots for system
expansion or ‘add-on’ cards. Three are ISA slots, the others are
PCI slots. When you get an expansion card, it must use one of
these to connect to the computer.
The ISA expansion slots are a legacy of the original IBM PC/
AT design. They are 16-bit slots that run at a moderate bus speed.
There are many kinds of expansion cards that use this slot design
to connect to the computer, some of the most common being
sound and modem cards. ISA slot 1 shares a position with PCI
slot 4, which means you can use only one of them.
PCI slots are the current high-speed 32-bit standard for sys-
tem expansion cards. They operate at a faster speed and have a
greater data throughput than ISA cards.
Note
Note
Note
Note
Note: PCI1 and PCI4 share REQ0, so you can only use a Bus
Master PCI card in one of them. Also, PCI1 and the AGP slot
share interrupt INTA and PCI4 shares INTD with the USB con-
troller. This means that the drivers for some PCI cards could cause
a conflict that might prevent a card from working. If you have a
problem with such a card in either of these slots, move it to PCI2
or PCI3 and see if the problem goes away.
Expansion cards often make use of system resources, which
requires managing the system resource configuration. Most newer
expansion cards support the ‘Plug and Play’ standard that allows
an Operating System like Windows95 to automatically detect
them and configure system resources as needed.
