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"'lo techy people. Lend me your brains a sec...."

Okies. This is to do with the 'possibly fried' ISA modem topic in FOG chat.

Okay TBN, I have SiSoft sandra, and from what I can tell I do indeed have an ISA slot.

Here's the details from the expansion slots section:
ISA - ISA 16-bit 5V FullLength
PCI (13h) - PCI 32-bit 5V FullLength Available
PCI (11h) - PCI 32-bit 5V FullLength Available
PCI (Fh) - PCI 32-bit 5V FullLength Available
PCI (Dh) - PCI 32-bit 5V FullLength InUse (by my network card)
PCI (8h) - PCI 32-bit 5V FullLength Available
AGP (8h) - ISA 32-bit 5V FullLength InUse (by my graphics card)

So.... why doesn't it appear to tell me if the ISA is in use?

Yeah, I know what it is, I was just wondering how it acheives a bigger bus. So, half half then. Not bad though.

Afaik it's a significantly wider (thus more pins, more data per push) and faster (in terms of MHz -- but I'm not entirely sure) bus.

However, Google is your friend, and I'll quote from someone who assumedly knows a lot more than me.

http://www.sysopt.com/agp.html

What is AGP?

Designed for Pentium II based motherboards, AGP will, among many other benefits, deliver a peak bandwidth that is 4 times higher than the PCI bus using pipelining, sideband addressing, and more data transfers per clock. It will also enables graphics cards to execute texture maps directly from system memory instead of forcing it to pre-load the texture data to the graphics card's local memory. AGP is based on the PCI 2.1 standard which calls for a 66MHz PCI bus speed.

Is the AGP bus technologically better than the PCI or just physically bigger?

To sum up this topic, because it's probably quite confusing :)

ISA:

Black.
Longest connector.
Usually nearest ground level on tower cases.
On newer motherboards there are usually either only one of them or none at all.

PCI:

White.
About 3/4 length of ISA with thinner copper connectors on the cards themselves than ISA.
Usually between 3 and 5 of them on newer motherboard -- between the AGP slot (of which there can only ever be one) nearest the power supply and the ISA slot at the bottom.

AGP:

Brown.
Approximately as wide as ISA.
Generally nearest the top of the motherboard, assuming the ISA slot is at the bottom.
Actual copper contacts on the boards are much thinner than PCI and look a bit like two layers of a brick wall, if that means anything to you..

Hope that helped, heh.

From memory I think my ISA is black too.

Indeed, heh, my apologies.

AGP (accelerated Graphics Port) slot is a brown slot usually at the top of of all the slots, PCI slots are the WHITE one's, ISA slots are the Black one's at the bottom, if you have a black slot with a brown extension this is a VESA (for older computers) if it is a small brown slot this is AMR.

so the ISA slot's are the black one's at the bottom.

c.b.

Doesn't have to be - AGP and AMR slots could be free, but ISA slots are always the long ones, and always seem to be white. Andi, Rob's right, they are generally put at the bottom of the mobo.

I'm not saying it's the lowest one. That was the Doc's idea. I was just commenting mine's the lowest too.

*Takes a screenshot of Andi admitting he was wrong*

Rob what are you talking about, PCI and ISA slots can but put in any order whatsoever. My motherboard doesnt even have ISA, thats how outdated it is..

As for the post about the only free unique one not with a graphics card in it, maybe it was me but, that made no sense whatsoever.