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PCI Bridge

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9 replies

by hamworthy

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I install a clean copy of Windows 95b on a PC all seems fine. But when I check System Devices the drivers for the PCI Bridge are not installed.

The PC seems to run fine without the drivers installed, all PCI/ISA cards work fine.

Could anyone shed any light as to what the PCI Bridge does and where I could find the drivers.

Thanks in advance.

9 replies

by buffalodan

PCI bridge is part of the systemboard chipset....bridging between the PCI bus, and other motherboard devices (ISA Bus, DMA/Memory bus, CPU).

Correct drivers can be had from your motherboard manufacturers CD, provided with the system board, or lacking this, from the manufacturer's web site. You must be able to completely identify the system board before you will be able to locate the correct drivers.
It may be possible to utilize a chipset discovery utility such as "CTPCI.EXE" and download from the chipset makers website..
But it is always better to go to your MB manufacturers website.

I have this utility, and would be happy to forward to you, contact me by e-mail, and i will reply with the attachment.

Hope this helps.

by parbo

You need the the PIIX4 drivers or Piix3 depending on your motherboard. It is for added functionality to the pci devices. The ide controllers for instance wont have dual fifo functionality right now. Dont know all the details about the bridge. Check the motherboard manufacturer for the appropriate drivers You will need them. i have seen instances where it will work like that for a while and all of a sudden the secondary ide controller will have a splat in device manager or wont be listed. So thecdrom will stop functioning.

by saihib

6.4 PCI-ISA Bridges
These bridges support legacy ISA devices by translating PCI I/O and PCI Memory space accesses into ISA I/O and ISA Memory accesses. A lot of systems now sold contain several ISA bus slots and several PCI bus slots. Over time the need for this backwards compatibility will dwindle and PCI only systems will be sold. Where in the ISA address spaces (I/O and Memory) the ISA devices of the system have their registers was fixed in the dim mists of time by the early Intel 8080 based PCs. Even a $5000 Alpha AXP based computer systems will have its ISA floppy controller at the same place in ISA I/O space as the first IBM PC. The PCI specification copes with this by reserving the lower regions of the PCI I/O and PCI Memory address spaces for use by the ISA peripherals in the system and using a single PCI-ISA bridge to translate any PCI memory accesses to those regions into ISA accesses.

6.5 PCI-PCI Bridges
PCI-PCI bridges are special PCI devices that glue the PCI buses of the system together. Simple systems have a single PCI bus but there is an electrical limit on the number of PCI devices that a single PCI bus can support. Using PCI-PCI bridges to add more PCI buses allows the system to support many more PCI devices. This is particularly important for a high performance server. Of course, Linux fully supports the use of PCI-PCI bridges.

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