 |
|
So today’s IT question of the week comes from my own experience. My wife recently got into audio visual scrapbooking with Adobe Premiere. She essentially taught it to herself, once again validating that she is the most awesome wife ever. Over the weekend we needed to make some hardware changes to her machine to accommodate the Pyro A/V Link video converter that she was borrowing from her father.
Now being loyal readers you all probably have the answer right on the tip of your tongue. ‘…You got her a FireWire card…’ As you remember, FireWire, or the IEEE 1394 interface is a serial bus interface for high speed, real time communication. It is the standard for any sort of video transfer. That’s why we needed it to take the old precious memories off of her VHS and Hi8 tapes and put them on the computer for her movie making pleasure. Now while all that is very interesting it is not the point of the article. While I was installing and configuring the FireWire card I was explaining what I was doing to my wife. That’s why I thought today we could talk about PCI and how it’s made installing expansion cards in a desktop easy.
PCI is an abbreviation for, Peripheral Component Interconnect. If you’ve ever taken the cover off your desktop, they are the 2 section while slots down in the corner of your motherboard. They are 32-bit computer buses used for attaching hardware devices into a computer. Work on PCI was developed by Intel back in 1990. It’s had 3 full iterations between then and 2002 when PCI 3.0 was released.
PCI is so easy because along with plug and play drivers it essentially takes care of installing itself. It provides separate memory and I/O port address spaces. This allows software to determine the amount of memory and I/O space that it needs. Also they normally have their own firmware or drivers so that they can work before the operating system starts.
Most motherboards now come with PCI-E slots. In 2004, it was designed to replace the older motherboard CardBus standards including PCI and AGP. PCI-E’s capacity is much faster than its older counterparts. PCI-E 3.0 which came out this past November is able to transfer at 1 GB/s per lane with normally 16 lanes in a card. This is why PCI-E has become a standard for new video cards.
If you have an interest in learning the inner workings of your machine, the first thing I would suggest is getting comfortable with the hardware. Make sure to unplug your computer, open it up, and learn what everything is and where it goes and what it connects to. Hopefully we here at It’s Geektime have again shed light on all your PC problems. If you have any questions in the future please feel free to let us know. Finally, remember, when you’re scared and feeling technically unsure. Never fear, IT guy is here!!!
blog comments powered by Disqus
