By the time PCI was getting to be in use (later 486, mid-line pentium 1), and quite a bit before, all the basic stuff was on a single card (Multi-IO), and all you typically had in a PC was graphics, Multi-IO (2xIDE, floppy, 2xserial, parallel, sometimes proprietary mouse), and a sound card -- or if you were a gamer, you had two Voodoo 2 cards with it, of course.
When ATX hit (mid to late Pentium/P-MMX), the multi-IO card came integrated on the motherboard (My Asus TX-97E was actually an AT-format version of an ATX board, that had those 6 connectors as lots of pin headers), and you just had graphics, sound, and network.
Far cry from the old days, when even expansion from the base memory of your XT could well be on an expansion card on the 8 bit ISA bus, let alone the hard drive controller, floppy controller, serial port card, etc.etc.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-04-01 04:04 pm (UTC)When ATX hit (mid to late Pentium/P-MMX), the multi-IO card came integrated on the motherboard (My Asus TX-97E was actually an AT-format version of an ATX board, that had those 6 connectors as lots of pin headers), and you just had graphics, sound, and network.
Far cry from the old days, when even expansion from the base memory of your XT could well be on an expansion card on the 8 bit ISA bus, let alone the hard drive controller, floppy controller, serial port card, etc.etc.