The ebook FEEE - Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and Electronics is based on material originally written by T.R. Kuphaldt and various co-authors. For more information please read the copyright pages.



Short-distance busses

Bus Description
PC/AT Bus used in early IBM-compatible computers to connect peripheral devices such as disk drive and sound cards to the motherboard of the computer.
PCI Another bus used in personal computers, but not limited to IBM-compatibles. Much faster than PC/AT. Typical data transfer rate of 100 Mbytes/second (32 bit) and 200 Mbytes/second (64 bit).
PCMCIA A bus designed to connect peripherals to laptop and notebook sized personal computers. Has a very small physical "footprint," but is considerably slower than other popular PC buses.
VME A high-performance bus (co-designed by Motorola, and based on Motorola's earlier Versa-Bus standard) for constructing versatile industrial and military computers, where multiple memory, peripheral, and even microprocessor cards could be plugged in to a passive "rack" or "card cage" to facilitate custom system designs. Typical data transfer rate of 50 Mbytes/second (64 bits wide).
VXI Actually an expansion of the VME bus, VXI (VME eXtension for Instrumentation) includes the standard VME bus along with connectors for analog signals between cards in the rack.
S-100 Sometimes called the Altair bus, this bus standard was the product of a conference in 1976, intended to serve as an interface to the Intel 8080 microprocessor chip. Similar in philosophy to the VME, where multiple function cards could be plugged in to a passive "rack," facilitating the construction of custom systems.
MC6800 The Motorola equivalent of the Intel-centric S-100 bus, designed to interface peripheral devices to the popular Motorola 6800 microprocessor chip.
STD Stands for Simple-To-Design, and is yet another passive "rack" similar to the PC/AT bus, and lends itself well toward designs based on IBM-compatible hardware. Designed by Pro-Log, it is 8 bits wide (parallel), accommodating relatively small (4.5 inch by 6.5 inch) circuit cards.
Multibus I and II Another bus intended for the flexible design of custom computer systems, designed by Intel. 16 bits wide (parallel).
CompactPCI An industrial adaptation of the personal computer PCI standard, designed as a higher-performance alternative to the older VME bus. At a bus clock speed of 66 MHz, data transfer rates are 200 Mbytes/ second (32 bit) or 400 Mbytes/sec (64 bit).
Microchannel Yet another bus, this one designed by IBM for their ill-fated PS/2 series of computers, intended for the interfacing of PC motherboards to peripheral devices.
IDE A bus used primarily for connecting personal computer hard disk drives with the appropriate peripheral cards. Widely used in today's personal computers for hard drive and CD-ROM drive interfacing.
SCSI An alternative (technically superior to IDE) bus used for personal computer disk drives. SCSI stands for Small Computer System Interface. Used in some IBM-compatible PC's, as well as Macintosh (Apple), and many mini and mainframe business computers. Used to interface hard drives, CD-ROM drives, floppy disk drives, printers, scanners, modems, and a host of other peripheral devices. Speeds up to 1.5 Mbytes per second for the original standard.
GPIB (IEEE 488) General Purpose Interface Bus, also known as HPIB or IEEE 488, which was intended for the interfacing of electronic test equipment such as oscilloscopes and multimeters to personal computers. 8 bit wide address/data "path" with 8 additional lines for communications control.
Centronics parallel Widely used on personal computers for interfacing printer and plotter devices. Sometimes used to interface with other peripheral devices, such as external ZIP (100 Mbyte floppy) disk drives and tape drives.
USB Universal Serial Bus, which is intended to interconnect many external peripheral devices (such as keyboards, modems, mice, etc.) to personal computers. Long used on Macintosh PC's, it is now being installed as new equipment on IBM-compatible machines.
FireWire (IEEE 1394) A high-speed serial network capable of operating at 100, 200, or 400 Mbps with versatile features such as "hot swapping" (adding or removing devices with the power on) and flexible topology. Designed for high-performance personal computer interfacing.
Bluetooth A radio-based communications network designed for office linking of computer devices. Provisions for data security designed into this network standard.


Last Update: 2010-11-19