Motherboard slot extension Question

[Black_Knight]

I'm not the most technical when it comes to electronics, so please bear with me.

I'm currently working on an "idea" for a computer mod. The problem is, I need to know if there are limitations with distance if extending slots from the mother board. (ex: PCI, AGP, etc..) My goal is to have some sort of connectors/wiring to the motherboard, and have the cards plug into slots 6", to 1 foot from the motherboard itself. Before I started talking to one of my buddies that works basic electronics, I wanted to know if there is a distance factor involved. I've seen flexible cable extenders at http://www.risercardshop.com/ but 6" is the most they offer and I didn't know if that was the distance limit or not.

 

[ChipDeath]

Everything has a length limit before the signals degrade. Because PCI/AGP are basically parallel interfaces, this distance is shorter still (as there's so many signal lines to worry about, and they have to be in synch).

So I would guess that anything over that 6" is perhaps possible, but would require very precise engineering....

So you're probably going to be stretching it (pardon the pun).

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|_____| This was bunny. He was tasty.
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[Black_Knight]

Hmmm...guess I could test the theory by taking 2 6" extenders and "rigging" them up into one. Thanks for the info, greatly appreciated. If anyone else has anymore to offer, thanks in advance.

 

[fishmahn]

I agree with Chipdeath.

In the 80's there were boxes available that extended the ISA bus into another case. Don't know how popular they were, but I'ld guess they were not very popular - or changes in technology made them obsolete. I thought it was a good idea at the time because literally everything needed a expansion slot - one for the drive controller, one for the video, one for a modem, one for your serial/parallel (sometimes one for each), one for the network card, one for...

Mike.

<font color=blue>Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside the dog its too dark to read.
-- Groucho Marx</font color=blue>

 

[Crashman]

ISA ran at a very low frequency.

<font color=blue>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to a hero as big as Crashman!</font color=blue>
<font color=red>Only a place as big as the internet could be home to an ego as large as Crashman's!</font color=red>

 

[Black_Knight]

Thanks for the info guys. After further brainstorming on my part, I've decided to not go with this idea for my project. I think I'm going to have enough probs building a desk from scratch and mounting parts, so I'm gonna work on this idea another time, after I've got the bigger parts of my mod worked out. Thanks again for all the helpful feedback.