Which PCI slot to use?

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Robin
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2004/05/07 21:15:34 (permalink)

Which PCI slot to use?

I've got an Intel 875p board with 5 PCI slots. The documentation says slot 2 is "SMbus enabled". Should I avoid putting an audio card (Echo Layla) in that slot? I've been swapping my card around while trying to eliminate an unpredictable blue screen problem and wondering if this slot will cause problems elsewhere. When the card is in that slot, the Layla is assigned IRQ22 on bus 3 and SMbus (whatever it is) is assigned IRQ3 on bus 0.


I'm curious as to the impact of having "SMbus enabled" on the slot my card's sitting in. The documentation says nothing I can interpret as being relevant. I've got a query in at Intel but I don't think they rush to answer single user questions.

Anyone familiar with this?

Robin
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    techead
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    RE: Which PCI slot to use? 2004/05/07 22:14:03 (permalink)
    I've got the Intel D875PBZ board--is that you you are using when you say 875p?

    I don't know much about the SMBus, but I did a small technical search on the Internet and found quite a few links. The top result was for http://www.smbus.org/ which appears to have information about the "Systems Management Bus". They describe it this way:

    "SMBus is the System Management Bus defined by Intel® Corporation in 1995. It is used in personal computers and servers for low-speed system management communications."

    I do network consulting by day for a living and honestly I have never used this; however, most of my client's networks are small.

    As far as the blue-screens, I'd suggest you look at the drivers more closely. It has been my experience with hardware/software in general that it is usally the drivers at the core of the problem rather than the hardware.

    You might also try using the search feature of this forum--a lot of people have dealt deeply with both hardware and software issues like this so you might find a related problem and a solution with some simple searches.
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    Robin
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    RE: Which PCI slot to use? 2004/05/07 23:17:26 (permalink)
    > I've got the Intel D875PBZ board--is that you you are using when you say 875p?

    Yes.

    > The top result was for http://www.smbus.org/ which appears to have information about the "Systems Management Bus".

    I checked that site. It's for developers and doesn't give any user level info.

    > As far as the blue-screens, I'd suggest you look at the drivers more closely. It has been my experience with hardware/software in general that it is usally the drivers at the core of the problem rather than the hardware.

    I agree. I'm not putting my chips down on this as any cause of my problem but I want to know what the interaction is, if any, between "smbus" and my audio card. Is it helpful? Hurtful? Irrelevant?

    I suppose that the smbus thing is useful for some pci cards or they wouldn't have enabled it on one of the slots. On the other hand, if it was helpful on *all* pci hardware, why not enable it on all of them?

    That's got me curious.

    I've searched the forum and nothing looks similar to my question.

    Robin
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    Jay Stephen
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    RE: Which PCI slot to use? 2004/05/08 08:18:42 (permalink)
    Do a search for "reclaiming SATA" on this forum. There is a ton of great info about PCI slot use.
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    Robin
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    RE: Which PCI slot to use? 2004/05/08 23:21:33 (permalink)
    Good thread, but it doesn't answer the question I have.
    I found a bit more info on the "SMbus enabled" feature on slot 2, though.
    "SMbus" is a standard for monitoring stuff on the box. The SMbus enabled pci slot has a couple pins associated with that management bus which allows you to monitor the stuff from a pci card (think of remotely monitoring the temp or voltage levels on a network server).

    The IRQ map shows the SMBus not sharing an irq with this pci slot, but I'm still wondering if the connection to the bus can have any impact (probably not, if the card doesn't use this feature... but I'd like to know fer sure).
    I'd just use another slot, but it just so happens that slot 2 shares no pirq signals with anything else in the box.

    I think it's not likely to be a prob, but it'd be nice to be certain.

    Robin
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    Tripecac
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    RE: Which PCI slot to use? 2007/11/05 10:35:30 (permalink)
    Which slot(s) did you end up trying for your audio card? Which worked the best?
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