Interfacing the PCI bus

[Marks256]

I am interested in interfacing the PCI bus (or at least seeing how it is done.) Does anyone know of any good (free) reading on how to interface the PCI bus? And has anyone here successfully interfaced the PCI bus? if so, what hardware did you use?


Thanks in advance

 

[Mikebits]

I am interested in interfacing the PCI bus (or at least seeing how it is done.) Does anyone know of any good (free) reading on how to interface the PCI bus? And has anyone here successfully interfaced the PCI bus? if so, what hardware did you use?


Thanks in advance

I have designed a PCI bus card and it is quite involved. Took a lot of reading and time. The trace layout was very critical. The device I interfaced to was a Xilinx virtex part and SRAM. The design was a ASIC emulator. Timing constraints are critical as the layout is. I spent 3 months making this design and had a good amount of support from apps engineers and others.

This undertaking is not simple, and I would suggest looking for a PCI board that is already designed that allows you to interface to a slower less complex bus. The development boards that I have seen are not cheap.

 

[Marks256]

Yes, i was looking at an Xilinx development board, but didn't really want to shell out the 600 bucks.


Do you think it would be more beneficial to interface an ISA bus first? I haven't seen very many DIY PCI projects, but i've seen a good share of DIY ISA projects, so i'm assuming it might be a bit easier... But are the basic principles the same?

 

[ericgibbs]

For starters.

HowStuffWorks "How PCI Works"

 

[blueroomelectronics]

What's wrong with the USB bus?

 

[Marks256]

For starters.

HowStuffWorks "How PCI Works"

Thanks i'll give that a read.

What's wrong with the USB bus?

Absolutely nothing. But i'm asking about PCI right now, not USB.