Hi Everyone

This is pretty much a continuation of this thread:
https://forum.allaboutcircuits.com/...using-isa-cards-for-breadboarding-i-o.125164/

Except that it's about PCI not ISA so I thought it deserved it's own thread.

I was thinking of using ISA breadboards for prototyping but there are also PCI ones and the more I think about this PCI or PCI-E are the way to go. Please see this breadboard, bottom of this page:
http://www.futurlec.com/Protoboards.shtml

I figure that if I get PCI or PIC-E breadboards(I have to find the right breadboard for PCI-E) then I could rig up lots of wire wrapped circuits. Trying to interface right from the PCI bus, creating some sort of ad-hoc SPI bus is probably a bad idea but there seems to be PCI to local bus chips that basically seem to allow regular PCI driver device development on one side with GPIO control output from the chip.

The thing is that most of these chips seem to have very high pin counts and tight pin spacing packaging. I don't really need a great deal of power and complexity. Does anyone know of a chip that would lend itself to bread-boarding and was not to hard to use?

DIP would be great but I think I can use PLCC through-hole sockets with breadboards too.

Thanks for any feedback-Patrick

 

@HalfMadDad

Your best bet would be to use a parallel port (or serial port). You can buy dead cheap PCI to parallel cards that slot straight into the PCI slot and give a parallel port output. Then from there, you could create a parallel to "whatever you desire" bus using a CPLD or FPGA. The xc9572xl CPLD comes in aPLCC 44 pin package which fits in a nice through-hole socket.

I would not try to directly connect to a PCI bus due to the complex transactions (hence the use of a converter). If you want to design your OWN card with a custom IC then just look at this:

• http://www.asix.com.tw/products.php?op=pItemdetail&PItemID=125;74;111
• http://uk.farnell.com/texas-instrum...0000004226&searchView=table&iscrfnonsku=false
  
• http://uk.farnell.com/exar/xr17v358...0000004219&searchView=table&iscrfnonsku=false

 

Hi Robin

Thanks for responding and thanks for the links. I will read all of this very carefully.

Have a great day

 

@HalfMadDad

No worries, happy hacking!