What Video Card Should I get

As of 2010 there are currently 4 major video interfaces used on either computers, PC monitors, televisions or both. The oldest is the VGA interface which started to appear on PCs in 1987.

The VGA interface has been upgraded a number of times and is now called the SVGA interface, although everyone still uses the generic term VGA to describe the interface [see note]. Even with its age and the fact that its the only analog interface left on a PC, it can still be found on the latest monitors and TVs for compatibility.


The search trend below tells the story, search interest in the term VGA [orange] has only dropped off slightly in the last 6 years. Now, there is no way to tell because the data is normalized, but the drop represents a large reduction in the number of searches.

The DVI connector is the second oldest video interface. The DVI was introduced in 1990 as a replacement to the analog VGA interface and was capable of both analog or digital operation. However the introduction of HDMI made the adaption fall off in the last few years. In fact the organization that developed the DVI specification disbanded in 2006. The graph shows a drop in DVI interest [Red], falling at about the same rate as the VGA interface. But at this point I think every body knows what a VGA interface is, its been twenty years.


The two interfaces showing an increase in searches are the HDMI output and the DisplayPort interface. From the graph, interest in HDMI appears to be growing faster the disinterest in DVI or VGA; but that make sense with so many fielded systems using either VGA or HDMI. The large spikes represent increased searches, probably due to news articles or new products being introduced.


The blue line down at the bottom of the graph represents Google searches for the term DisplayPort. It may appear that there is no interest in the new DisplayPort video interface, but that is only when compared to the vast number of searches being conducted for the other video card types. If you happen to zoom in, or re-normalize the graph with out the other video interfaces than the increase becomes apparent [shown below].

 Interest in Displayport has doubled over the last few years, up four fold from its release date.

Many times when a interface standard is released it takes another year before products begin to hit the market. In the case of a video standard you need at least two different manufacturers producing products; one selling a video card and a different manufacturer selling a computer monitor. Then there's the issue of demand; a company making PC monitors may not want to go to the expense of designing a new interface when the mating interface is not yet available on a video card. So in some cases it may take a few years for a new video standard to take hold.

For example DisplayPort may have been released in 2007, but video cards with a DisplayPort interface may not have appear until 2008 followed sometime later by computer monitors.

Anyway the best video monitor interface to use is DisplayPort, or HDMI on a TV. They're both digital interfaces, but HDMI is more common than DisplayPort.

Note; The search trend for the term VGA shows a dramatic drop in search usage from 2004 to 2007 and a steady decline onward. But when compared to the term SVGA, SVGA does not even register on the same graph. In other words the term VGA is being searched for 20 to 25 times more than the term SVGA.

In general I keep my PC for around two years and the monitors for about four years. The two AOC 2436 monitors I'm currently using [AOC 2436-vh review] has both a HDMI and VGA interfaces. So they don't have the newest DisplayPort interface or the out-dated DVI interface, but a good  mix of both analog and digital connectors. My Dell SX8100 computer uses an ATI Radeon HD 5770 video card with dual-link DVI, DisplayPort and HDMI outputs. Note the lack of a VGA interface
.

AMDs 6-Core Processor

Did I just read an article saying AMD would come out with a new six-core processor for a mere $200. I think it may be time to up-grade my PC and get a new one. What; I'll have to upgrade to the new MS OS, what ever that is. I'll have to go out and find out what people are saying about OS7 [Windows 7]

Windows 7

-- Improved performance with multi-core processors
-- Improved boot performance
-- Does not yet support USB 3.0 [available with SP1 late 2010]
Desktop
-- No USB 3.0 support yet [that I found]
-- PCI Express 3.0 not yet been released [later this year]
-- Serial ATA revision 3.0 [no products found yet]
-- DDR3  [mainstream support]
Ok I guess this blog posting is pointless. I would like the 6-core processor, but not at any cost. My office applications wouldn't even really see any advantage any way. But more importantly I find no support for USB 3.0 or Serial ATA version 3.0. I also don't want Windows 7 before the first service pack.

So why purchase a PC that will be out-of-date 6 months after I get it. By next year all USB drives will be USB 3.0. I'm not sure if I would wait for PCIe 3.0 support, I'd be waiting another year. So no new PC for me this year, I'd just end up giving it away 6 months later.

I did note that the AMD3 socket processor style is out. ~
Six core AMD Processors; Phenom II X6 1055T and Phenom II X6 1090T

Toyota's Blackbox and OBD

I'm reading The Wall Street Journal yesterday and I see this article about an issue relating to reading the Blackbox in Toyota vehicles. Now it doesn't really say why people can't read the blackbox data but it most either be because there is no published literature on how to read the data or that the data is encrypted. I would assume the information in the blackbox is encrypted otherwise somebody would have hacked it by now. Of course there is always that privacy issue about giving out automotive data without the owners consent.

Anyway I always assumed that the data in the black box was as easy to obtain as the data on the OBD interface. Well maybe not that easy but along the same lines as reading any OBD codes as long as the user had the correct scanner, the right software and knew what the data represented. OBD supplies trouble codes from the engine indicating emission problems and other faults. [OBD Description].

So the OnBoard Diagnostics [OBD] interface has been required on US cars since 1996, or if your lived in California since 1988 ~ here's a little OBD History.While I gather the blackbox [Event Data Recorder] is that part of the system that records things like over-revving the engine, or things people would rather not tell a car dealer. Even worse that the Data Recorder could indicate that the driver was speeding just before an accident. I would still think the info is retrievable, or why record it.

In some way the blackbox data must be separate from the vehicle trouble codes that are readable as required by law. Is there one uC to handle the blackbox and another computer for the OBD interface? It was also my impression that the government was in the process of standardizing the data from the blackbox, which implies that it is retrievable.

I'm certainly no automotive expert, just an engineer that tracks the electrical requirements of different interfaces. Ok, the last time I worked on a car was in the seventies which is long before cars had computers.

Is this data available on the OBD connector, on the CANbus portion of the interface or is this a completely different interface on another connector and does it vary by manufacturer. At any rate I was just a little suppressed by the fact that it's so hard to get at the data.

The correct term for the Blackbox is Motor Vehicle Event Data Recorder [MVEDR].

Search Trends vs Page Views

As we all know the original SCSI interface is in decline and has been for a number of years now. The 'old' parallel bus is up against Fiber Channel [FC], Serial SCSI [SAS] and Serial ATA [SATA] to name a few of the possible Hard Drive interfaces.

In fact I found a chart of Worldwide HDD Shipments; All Form Factors by Interface, 2008-2012 [produced in 2009], units shipments vs year. The chart indicates that SCSI may have had a few percentage of the total units shipped in 2008, but is all but gone in 2009 and beyond. Seems right to me, of course there still must be a large amount of units still deployed even now, regardless of SCSI being obsolete. Their projection for 2010 indicates that 90+ drive units shipped would contain either a SAS or SATA interface.

But almost no SCSI drive was ever used as a personal 'home use' HDD interface, as the SCSI interface was always more expensive than an IDE drive interface. So most people would have never even had a chance to worry if they had an out-dated SCSI interface in their PC.

So as SCSI searches [on Google] dropped 90% over the last 4 years, SCSI page views on interfacebus have been flat. So why is that? The trend line above shows a tremendous drop in searches over the last four years, but visitors to this site remain constant. That tells me that over the previous last few years I've missed out on a large amount of incoming traffic. Were the pages on this site always relegated to some small portion of the key words, I guess there's no way to tell. Normally I don't like to finds pages that are in decline, but in this case I wish I did. Only because now I know that for a vast amount of internet searches related to the SCSI bus this site was never used. Any way; here are the rest of the pages that make up the SCSI section;
SCSI I interface description.
SCSI II interface description.
SCSI III interface description.
SCSI VI interface description.
SCSI V interface description.
SCSI single ended A cable, and  SCSI differential ended A cable.
SCSI single ended Q cable, and  SCSI differential ended Q cable.
SCSI B connector, and  SCSI P connector.
SCSI HDI-30 connector.

SEO advice; I don't have any optimization advice this time. Although pageviews to this SCSI related section have been constant, they have been consistently low.

Side note; I tried looking up 'Hard drive market forecast', HDD Sales trends, market volume and so on but I could only retrieve a table of contents to reports that had to be purchased. So finding the data is a bit hard and took a number of searches to uncover.
Graph: From Google Trends, using the search term SCSI [2004 to Jan 2010].

Interest in Personal Computer Buses

I figured I would post a few pages that have seen a reduction in page views from this year to last.

The page covering the USB interface had a reduction of 0.12%, which is nothing.

Now the PCIe page had a reduction of 17.20%, which is not good. The PCI express interface is still the fastest interface on the PC so I'm surprised to see a drop in visits that high. However it looks like much of the drop occurred in the first six months of this year, it started to make a come back after that.

The SATA interface also had a 3.23% drop from last year. Again this is a new interface which should still have some interest, so I would expect more page views.

The older Hard drive interface [IDE] also had a drop of 30.98%. The Parallel IDE interface [PATA] is obsolete so I would expect a drop in page views here, but maybe not that high. There should still be many computer users that run this older bus style. You would thing this would be the time people start looking up data on the bus as they begin to suffer hard drive problems.

Also had a 19.86% reduction in page views for the FireWire Bus. However I think I can under stand this reduction. I think I wrote something about some Apple computers not even shipping with the Firewire interface any longer. I've never even had a Firewire product.

Yet another obsolete PC bus, the RS232 interface also had a 6.48% drop from last year. I don't think I have any RS232 gear any longer, for a few years now. I still see RS232 ports on new PCs, which continues to surprise me.

Last one, for now, the PCI bus showed a 27.86% reduction in page views. I would like to say this interface is obsolete too, but I can't because there are many PC cards produced in the PCI format. Many card functions can't be purchased in the PCIe format. I think the PCI slot will be on motherboards for years to come.

So interest in topics comes and goes over time. Remember that the search engines are always re-ordering their results too. So some of these drops could be due to sliding down lower in the search results. The chart shows around a 20% increase in page-views over the last few months.

Graphic; PageViews [per week] so far this year.

There are 30,442 pages in the list I'm reading off Google Analytics, but there are only around 1,600 pages on the web site. The rest of those pages are search pages or mis-spelled [404] pages. This site does not have 30,000 different web pages. I should have cleaned that up a bit and re-typed that text.

How to get a high Search Engine Postion

Search Engine Position [SEP] is the term used to describe where in a search engine listing a web address [web site] shows up. A good SEP would be ending up on the first page of results returned from a search. Of course showing up in position number one would be the best out-come.

A lot of web sites pay companies called SEO's [for Search Engine Optimization] to help the ranks or position in the search engines. But many times SEO's are employed by people that don't really under stand how search engines work, course their trying to run a business and might not have time to investigate the issue.

Well in most cases I think about those issues while generating a new page, and I try to account for many of the issues. However because page optimization [SEO tactics] doesn't help the viewer I don't always perform all the optimizations possible. As time goes on additional page optimizing is added, maybe the next time the page gets up-dated.

So any way I added a new page yesterday covering the Single Wire Debug Bus, and I linked to it from one of the Interface buses listing pages.  I also blogged about the new page in the new engineering pages blog.

I was out in Google searching for data on the Single Wire Debug Bus because I never really started writing the page yet. Guess what, using the search terms "Single Wire Debug" that new page I generated yesterday shows up on the first page of the results and is the 6th listing on the page [out off 136,000 pages]... That's pretty good.

Graphic; NASA rocket maximum payload comparison.

Digital Video Connector Identification

I got an email a few hours ago from some one trying to identify a connector on the back of a PC card. The video connector appeared to be DVI connector, but had 35 pins instead of 29 pins.

For the first few minutes I was wondering what the connector was, but after a few clicks on the web site I replied to the e-mail with an answer. I found two other connector styles with the correct amount of pins, and that looked just like a DVI plug:
Enhanced Video Connector, EVC.
Plug and Display, P & D. released in 1996

I think both these interfaces are dated, but many obsolete interfaces are still in production, ISA cards for example. Any way there are newer video interfaces out there to replace even the DVI bus; HDMI, and UDI to name two.

USB 3.0 Specification

Looks like the new USB standard is due out soon. Other than the transfer rate (4.8 Gbit/s, 600 MB/s) and some data about the new connectors I have not found any other data on the specification yet.

USB 3.0 products are not due out until at least 2009, so you still have awhile.

Update; so there are a few products starting to be introduced now, as of 9/09. Of course my PC will not take advantage of of 3.0 USB device and I don't have any planes on getting a new PC this year either.

So;
Description of USB 2.0.
Description of USB 3.0.

Web Site Optimization vs Bandwidth

I up-loaded the xml sitemap for interfacebus up to my site on Google Pages. The xml site map is used by search engines to determine the page addresses of all pages located on a web site. Search engines find your site map via a command within your robots.txt file. Up until now the robots.txt file indicated the site map was out on my server. The sitemap started on my server because Google Sitemaps does not give you the option of having the map in another location.

However, all other search engines find the sitemap via the robots text file. So Google will still check the site map, and hit my bandwidth, but now all the other search engines will go out to Google pages to access the sitemap.

The xml site map is 284k bytes in size and was viewed [down-loaded] 43 times last month. That's over 12 MBytes of server bandwidth. Yes I'm still trying to reduce bandwidth; currently running at 58.35kB/visit.

The html version of the sitemap [used by people] has been viewed 631 times this year. At the bottom of the sitemap is a list of the html pages located on 'Google Pages'; however the xml file will not be listed. The html viewable sitemap is also out on the Google server, saving server bandwidth..

The attached graphic shows the search trend for the term "miniPCI". I checked after my Analytics report indicated only three hits to the miniPCI page on the site [that's 3 hits for the year]. However it looks like I viewed data for a 404 page. The active MiniPCI pages has seen 3,377 page views. The page covering the MiniPCI 100-pin Signal Assignments page has received 333 page views, while the page covering the 124-pin MiniPCI card has received 3,497 page views.

Web Page Updates

With the addition of the page covering Manufacturers of Thermal Chambers, I also added those 'few' companies to the appropriate OEM alphabetic listing. While adding those new links I also noted pages that contain an old google search bar or pages that could use a new referral link, or pages that still contain html comments [to save server bandwidth]. Pages that were up-dated in the
Alphabetic Manufacturers section;

Manufacturers 'Br',
Manufacturers 'Ea',
Manufacturers 'Ec',
Manufacturers 'El',
Manufacturers 'Emco',
Manufacturers Eon,
Manufacturers 'Tele',

Two additional companies were added to the PON IC's manufacturers page. A few words were added to the FTTH Description page, now linking to the Ethernet in the First Mile page. A number of Engineering Acronym pages were updated, this being but one example. Also all the IC Packaging pages were up-dated; The MEMS [MicroElectro-Mechanical Systems] had a new oscillator manufacturer added.

When required the pages received a new search bar, had hidden comments deleted, HTML code fixes and so on. Any how, other than posting what pages are changing this post serves a higher purpose, right. The posting serves to provide another external link to these pages which is always a good thing, perhaps insuring a page rank. It pings the search engine to check these pages as the engine reads these page....

The point is not to list all 25 pages that were updated today, but hit the highlights. Let viewers know what is going on and at the same time serve a dual function of working SEO issues ~ optimizing the pages for Search Engines, either on my web site or from this site.....

Oh, if you read this blog, Bandwidth is 60kB/visit, still growing after all my work to date?

HDMI-1.3 Specification

Been reading up on the release of version 1.3 of the HDMI standard. HDMI stands for High-Definition Multimedia Interface. Seen many comments on the major changes and how it renders the previous versions obsolete ~ HDMI 1.3 is backward compatible.

The High-Definition Multimedia Interface is provided for transmitting digital television audio visual
signals from DVD players, set-top boxes and other audio-visual sources to television sets,
projectors and other video displays. HDMI can carry high quality multi-channel audio data and can carry all standard and high definition consumer electronics video formats. HDMI can also carry control and status information in both directions.

I checked each of my Digital Audio/Video Receivers, both made by Sony. I have an STR-DE485 which is a 5-to-1 system, and a STR-DE995 7-to-1 system. Neither of these 'control centers' have an HDMI port. And I was worried I had an earlier version than 1.3. Both of these units are still 'like new', what now I need this HDMI interface? Component review; I like both AV systems.

I didn't bother checking the HD TV because I wouldn't mind changing that out for a larger one. Same for the DVD players, I'll change them out for a newer Blu-Ray, or the other one when things calm down in the DVD wars.

Declining PC Interface Buses

Following the previous post on the decline of the RS232 bus, I checked the other common PC buses found on computers. Because the article contains a number of graphics I up-loaded it to Google base as a holder for the pictures, the text is duplicated below. Simply mouse over the pictures to see the search trends: Interface Bus Search Terms.

The attached files show the search trends for a number of PC interface buses. The graphs show the number of searches on the terms indicated, all were common PC buses over the last decade.

The SCSI bus shows a large decline in search traffic. SCSI was always an expensive interface to implement and really used mostly by high-end or enterprise users. So it's understandable that when Serial SCSI [SAS] came out users would quickly migrate to using the faster SAS bus.

The RS232 bus used as the main serial interface on the PC for years, is now being left off new computer systems in favor of the USB port. There are a number of reasons to drop the RS232 interface, the size of the 9-pin D connector is just one reason, speed is another.

The term Printer Port also shows a decline in searchs. Printer Port is a generic term used to describe the connector located either on the printer or a PC. A Printer Port may refer to a Centronics interface, IEEE-1284 interface or another other interface used on a printer. However; now that USB and Ethernet connections are showing up on printers it's safe to assume that the searches are being done using those terms.

The Centronics printer port was used on computers almost from the beginning of the PC age. However in the mid 90's the centronics bus started to be replaced by the IEEE-1284 interface which happen to be a better well define standard. By 2005, the IEEE1284 was being left off printers in favor of an Ethernet and/or a USB port.

The PCI bus still exists on PC Motherboards, but is slowing being replaced by the newer faster PCI Express bus [PCIe]. But the decline of PCI has been slower than other interface standards due to the slow implementation of boards using the 1x PCIe interface. While the 16x PCIe slot started to replace the AGP expansion slot by the very first year of release. Note the large increase in searches for the term PCIe.

The AGP interface seems to be hanging on in the PC upgrade market. Not sure how many motherboards are still shipping with an AGP interface.

The Firewire interface doesn't seem to be popular any longer.

The ISA bus [ATbus] also is showing a decline, but not as great as expected. The ISA bus was rendered obsolete by the PCI bus years ago. It could be that as long as industrial legacy computers continue to function they don't require replacement.

The main interface between PC motherboards and Hard Disk Drives [HDD] use to be the IDE [ATA] interface; however most newer models shipped are now using the Serial ATA bus [SATA]. Serial ATA is much faster than normal ATA. Note the increase for the term SATA

The old Floppy Drive is also in decline. With the low cost of USB thumb drives there is no longer a need for a floppy disk drive. Many new computer systems no longer ship with a floppy drive. But you can always purchase an external Floppy drive, normally with a USB interface to the computer.

So, all these buses were common terms just a few years ago, but don't even exist on most new personal computers shipped today.

The demise of RS232

Back in Dec 05 I posted a blog about the future of RS232. I Indicated that RS232 was basically obsolete. Early this year some one commented on that post with their disagreement and rational.

Of course I was referring to the commercial usage of RS232, there are just to many legacy systems deployed for the military to drop RS232. However, I still don't think new systems should use an RS232 interface. RS232 is specified to drive 10 meters while USB only travels out to 4 meters, but you could use a hub to extend the USB cable. For longer distances without a hub I'd recommend using RS422, or RS485.

Still most computers are not shipping with a RS232 connector on the rear panel any longer. This post shows one style of the newer version of a motherboard I/O panel. I think Dell computers dropped the RS232 interface last year, while Apple dropped it 3 years ago. Users always have the option of adding an expansion card to there computer to add RS232 capability.

Any how, the graphic is google search history for the term RS232. The original post follows:

.... The picture shown above depicts the back panel I/O found on some newer mother boards. Comparing that picture with the one at the bottom of this post and the difference becomes obvious. The RS-232 and IEEE-1284 connectors have been replaced by a heat sink. The video interface has also been removed.

It makes perfect sense to remove the RS232 interface and the other two connectors from the back of computers. The video interface is normally found on the video card, so the 15-pin D-sub connector is not required. Many video cards ship with a DVI and VGA connector, so why have another one the mother board. The 25-pin parallel port connector is out dated. Many new printers ship with an Ethernet port which is much faster then the IEEE-1284 interface bus. With over 6 USB ports to handle any required peripheral, and 2 circular DINs to accommodate a keyboard and mouse the RS-232 interface is just not required.

When you add all this up, the benefit to removing these out-dated interfaces translate to higher speed peripheral connections, reduced cost by eliminating 3 large connectors, and the better use of the motherboard back panel.

In the three different mother boards I looked at the free space was taken up by a heat sink and fan. Both used to vent heat from the chip set ICs

The Apple computers removed the RS232 bus and IEEE-1284 [Printer Port] bus some time ago. The RS232 interface is dead and should not be used for new designs. The IEEE-1284 interface is dead. The 15-pin VGA interface is dead on the newer mother boards. These interfaces should start to disappear next year ...

Anonymous said...

I disagree. While RS232 may be dying in the consumer world, it is found everywhere in industry, even in new designs. I bought a laptop three weeks ago, and one of the primary factors in deciding what to buy was having an onboard serial port so I wouldn't have to carry around an often unreliable USB to serial adapter. RS232, and especially RS485 and RS422, while possibly not even on the radar anymore in the consumer world, are guaranteed to be alive and kicking in commercial/industrial/military applications for years to come. Sure, it makes sense to save the space on a piece of crap off the shelf computer from Emachines... but doing so means you're effectively cutting out a segment of the market. The same applies for 1284, though admittedly to a lesser extent. I watched a company buy 17 new computers for employees who each had their own printer at their desks without checking if the computers came with 1284 ports. They ended up buying 17 USB to parallel adapters because it made more sense than throwing away all the older printers that still work great. Sure, it works... but that's just annoying. Let's never take anything out of Apple's playbook. If people want a Mac, they'll buy one, and they'll be so preoccupied with the things Apple tells them they can do on it that they can't think of the things Apple won't let them do.

Video Interfaces

Just how many different types of video interfaces are there, and which ones should reside on my gear? Of course there's VGA, or really SVGA, which still gets supplied with most monitors and computers. However I oped for DVI on the last video card I purchased.

HDMI came out last year and it's competitor DisplayPort came out this year. Of course there are others, but most interfaces are out-dated ~ as well as all the analog interfaces.

The pic is just another map showing visits by city from China....

PCI-104 Form Factor

Following along a previous posting about the slow adoption of new interface bus standards, I have yet another one. Upgrading the page that covers PC104 board manufacturers and separating out vendors that produce only PCI104 cards, I don't find that many companies producing PCI/104 boards.

The attached graphic shows the road-map [up-grade path]. The PC104 standard started out with an IBM XT bus interface in a 90mm x 96mm board format in 1992. Following that release, the IBM AT bus interface was added a few years later. Then in 1997 the PCI bus interface was added to reside along side the PCAT bus, as a new connector. With each upgrade board area was reduced because of the increase in the number of connectors. However; card-to-card transmission speed increased as the interface buses increased their throughput.

The PCI104 specification was released in 2003. The change here was to leave the PCI interface, now common, and remove the connectors and interfaces dedicated to the out-dated PCAT bus which than freed up board space.

Odd that there are still not that many PCI/104 board vendors. The stack height is reduced form 6 cards to 4 cards, but they may still be stacked using the PCI104 standard. Could it be that the CPU card is the only CCA that requires a PCI interface, while all the other I/O cards don't benefit from being redesigned? Maybe the increased density of FPGAs compensated for the reduced board area? Perhaps most OEMs require a 6-card stack in a PC/104 chassis. What ever the reason, the original PC bus lives on......

Graphic; The different connector locations for each PC/104 board format.

IPMI Bus

I added three new pages tonight to cover intel's IPMI bus.
The Intelligent Platform Management Interface has been released for a few years now, and I don't know how I've missed it. I'll cover the topic now. The three pages are just a copy of the I2C bus for now, as a place holder. But over the week end I'll gear them up and address the topic. The new pages are located at these page addresses;

IPMI
IPMB
SMIC

The pages are just place holders....

Unrelated ~ I hear AMD is reducing the price of their processors next month. Must be time for a new computer. I think I run a dual core 4800 now ~ still over an AGP interface.

I need a PCIe 16x interface, SATA 2.0, flash hard drive, Windows Vista ~ I'm two years out-of-date......

CableCARD

CableCARD from what I have found so far is a 16-bit PC Card in a PCMCIA format. CableCARD was designed to replace the cable box from the cable company; any company could produce a CableCARD from the standard so you were not locked into renting from the cable company. This was a government thing, I guess the FCC.

CableCARD appears as a PCMCIA slot on the back of HDTV sets.

Any how version 1.0 came out last year from I understand and it has a few draw backs. Information only flows one-way with CableCARD. So with CableCARD you are not able to use Pay-per-view because the card only receives signals from the cable company it does not send information out to them. Seems like a lot of people are already waiting for CableCARD 2.0 to come out to address the short comings of version 1.0.

So CableCARD from a hardware view is just another implementation of the PCMCIA card. Why they used the out-dated PC Card interface escapes me.

Here is the new CableCARD listing.

PCIe Card Size

I added this page which shows the dimensions of the PCI Express Board
http://www.interfacebus.com/PCIe_Card_Dimensions.html

New Posts

More new pages added to www.interfacebus.com

The ZigBee page is blank, but I should get to it this week end.
http://www.interfacebus.com/IEEE802-15-4_ZigBee_Description.html

The Protocol Analyzer page also only has a few companies.
http://www.interfacebus.com/Test_Equipment_Protocol_Analyzer_Manufacturers.html
http://www.interfacebus.com/COTS_InfiniBand_Board_Manufacturers.html
Many of the InfiniBand products I'm finding are server boxes and not boards.
http://www.interfacebus.com/WaveGuide_Manufacturers.html
http://www.interfacebus.com/High_Definition_Audio.html

I should be up-dating each of these pages this week, or as I have more time.

PCI Express Cards

Manufacturers of PCI Express cards now has its own page;
PCIe card manufacturers. Most cards are video cards, but are few are not.

Those listings were on the main COTS board manufacturers page.

The site home page is here; interfacebus.com