lo all,

Would it be possible to add extra PCI slots to the Shuttle fv24 motherboard?

Ive seen company that make PCI risers so Im thinking that if the signals required by the "little board on a cable" for the riser are present on the motherboard, a second or even third slot would be a possibility?

Or should I just totally give up and go home?

While I'm not real sure about this... I think that PCI slots are numbered to the computer. Meaning that there are separate lines to each slot. In other words if you tried this there would be two cards on slot 1 and they would conflict with each other, instead of showing up as slot 1 and slot 2. Another clue that leads me to believe that is true is the picture of the PCI risers you found. If you look closely you will see that any of the risers with more than one slot on them have a set of wire that connects to the rest of the PCI slots on the board. These are the special lines to each PCI slot that I am referring to.

So I would say that you can't add more slots. These PCI risers you found simply relocate the PCI boards in the machine.

I could be incorrect.

I know for macs you can get a device like that only in a seperate case connected to the computer with some type of cable I haven't heard about using one on a pc

That would be a PCI-to-PCI bridge, which should be available on PCs, as most motherboards utilize that technology internal to the motherboard, but I've never actually seen a separate unit in real life, but I have heard of them.

the ones I have seen (pictures anyway) pretty much just looked like another pc case

the ones I have seen (pictures anyway) pretty much just looked like another pc case

The company my brother works for uses such things to debug the PCI hardware they design. They're extraordinarily expensive, like thousands of pounds (the issue being maintaining signal synchrony across the whole bus when transporting signals that distance).

Peter

Sorry, I guess I was a little bit vague

My idea was to locate those extra lines required by the adapter board on the link picture, and then attach these directly rather than using second slot PCI adapter.

The question is, are these signals likely to be on the motherboard?
Surely the chipset used iis a standard one, and not hacked to disable the extra PCI slots, they just simply dont wire up the pins on the chip to a PCI socket?

Ok, then I think the answer would lie with Shuttle. Unless you know or can find out what chip(s) do the 'extra lines'. There are only four or so, so getting it wired up if they exist on the board would be easy. You are gonna have to find someone that has familairty with the PCI bus.

You can get 1 slot -> n slot adapters for PCI that don't require you to add any additional connections to other slots. But they're basically a PCI-PCI bridge chip stuck onto a PCI board which means its quite expensive.

We've got a LSI Logic one at work somewhere.

- Trevor