CompuServe Messages

Steven, ISA compatibility is the main cause of the success of the EISA bus over IBM's Microchannel. When a group of top vendors decided to design a new bus that can expand the system according the new CPUs, they also decided that it'll have to be compatible with the ISA standard, creating the EISA bus. In the other side, the omniscient big blue decide that their costumers can throw throught the window all their ISA cards investment and buy a new smart technology called Microchannel (created from scratch by IBM engineers), that can give costumers a very high performance, easy to setup bus and can give IBM the weapon to destroy the clone market. In my opinion, with OS/2 and Windows 3.0 success, Microchannel marks the fall of the giant. You can buy EISA without fear, it will hold all your ISA cards. No VLB bus neither PCI can hold ISA cards. Expect to see more and more VLB/EISA and PCI/EISA boards in the future. I think that finally all will go to open enviroments, with all kind of buses for all kind of CPUs. Ana