Asus P5B PCI slots voltage...OK for Digidesign HD (old PCI) cards?

[Krubbadoo]

Just bought this motherboard and was wondering if I could try putting my Pro Tools HD3 old PCI (not PCI-X or PCI-e ) cards in it. I know Digidesign recommends putting them in three consecutive 3.3v/2A slots.
All I can find on the net is that the Asus is PCI 2.2 compliant but no specs on the PCI slots mesurements. What does it mean?
Can the Asus PCI 2.2 slots run at 3.3v/2A ? Just don't wanna fry 13k's of cards into this...Thanks.
Krubbadoo@hotmail.com

 

[Crashman]

PCI cards are notched for one voltage or the other, and the slots are keyed for one voltage notch or the other, so you should be able to figure it out from the photos

 

[cyberjock]

Yep. They are keyed for what they are compatible with. If you can put it in the slot it'll work without any problems.

 

[d4vinder]

Nope they are wrong,

PCI slots use either 5v or 3.3V

The newer ones use 3.3v and older pci card wont work at all.

I have the ds2416 yamaha... pci but it didnt work with my new p5b deluxe pci slot... nope bcoz its a fkin 5v and a 3.3v slot, however the card fits in perfectly fine.

 

[Crashman]

Nope they are wrong,

PCI slots use either 5v or 3.3V

The newer ones use 3.3v and older pci card wont work at all.

I have the ds2416 yamaha... pci but it didnt work with my new p5b deluxe pci slot... nope bcoz its a fkin 5v and a 3.3v slot, however the card fits in perfectly fine.

Well then the card maker was wrong, not us, we can't be held responsible for design defects. PCI slots have a key in either the front or the back, to work with cards that have a key notch in either the front or the back. Cards that have two notches are supposed to work with either voltage, if they don't it's a design defect.

 

[Jim Lad]

Just to confirm what d4vinder wrote :
I just found out the hard way that the older cards will fit quite nicely but won't work.
I have an Echo Mona card which wouldn't work for me in my new Biostar board.
Tried it in my friend's Asus... same thing.
The good news is that the card wasn't harmed but I'm finding a lot of sites on the Internet claiming that the 5v cards won't fit.
Not true.
Many cards will fit.
Wish I could have found you guys sooner.
Cheers!
Jim

 

[cyberjock]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peripheral_Component_Interconnect

PCI 2.2 allows for 66 MHz signalling at 3.3 volt signal voltage (peak transfer rate of 533 MB/s), but at 33 MHz both 5 volt and 3.3 volt signal voltages are still allowed. Power rails to provide 3.3 volt supply voltage are now mandatory.

This sounds more like the 66Mhz signalling isn't working for 33Mhz card...

 

[Jim Lad]

From what I have read, the new PCI slots will still accept the old cards but the gold bars don't lign up. This to prevent you from frying something.
I'm still puzzled though.
The new board accepts my USB/Firewire card bit not the Mona.
I'd dearly love to use this card in the new motherboard.

This sounds more like the 66Mhz signalling isn't working for 33Mhz card...

Is there a fix for that?
Clearly, I'm no genius at this stuff.
Regards.
Jim

 

[cyberjock]

Unfortunately, the only solution I have is to find a board with a 66Mhz PCI slot - which would be PCI-X. PCI bus normally is 33Mhz, but it sounds like your card is a PCI-X card, but it only uses the 32-bit channel. This would allow it to fix correctly in a PCI slot physically, but still require a PCI-X slot. There's no chance you'd be able to successfully overclock your PCI bus to 66Mhz to test this. Sounds like you need to find a PCIX motherboard unfortunately.

My little disclaimer with this comment: I am only hypothesizing this. Although I feel I'm right, and it all makes logical sense, there could be some much bigger difference between PCIX and PCI than I know about. I have used both in the past, and PCIX slots are supposed to be downward compatible with PCI cards, I am not sure how the opposite actually works. My motherboard that had PCIX slots had a jumper for 33/66 Mhz operation. If you needed to use a PCIX slot for a PCI card, you had to move the jumper, but this would degrade all PCIX slots to 33mhz.

 

[Crashman]

The problems I've seen with PCI card compatibility are:
1.) Old Cards that preceed PCI v1.1 not being compatible with later motherboards.
2.) VERY old PCI cards from the 486 days that didn't meet PCI 1.0 specs because they were designed for a 25MHz slot (used with 486-DX25 and DX2-50 processors). Installing them in a 33MHz bus would overclock them, causing data corruption. Gateway had a bunch of video cards like this.
3.) Proprietary PCI cards that didn't have firmware (the card firmware was in Motherboard BIOS), again from the 486 days. Gateway had some ATA cards like this.
4.) Macintosh firmware incompatible with x86 and vice versa.