Card Slot Identification

Identifying the card slots on a motherboard

There are many different card slot types that you will run in to here at Free Geek, so it can be rather challenging to determine which type you are looking at. Below are some guidelines to help determine the slot type on the motherboard and the slot on the card itself.

But before we can discuss these we must talk about the basic mother board layout. To arrange the board so that you can easily find the card slots, you should take an example board and turn it so that the on-board cluster or AT keyboard connector is facing you. Now you can see the card slots to the right of the on-board connectors.

To configure the board so that you can easily find the card slots we are going to discuss you will need to take an example board and turn the board so that the on board cluster or AT Keyboard connector is facing you. The most reliable ways are:

• Checking the distance between the outside of the box on the motherboard and the beginning of the pins, or the

 distance between the face plate on the card and the beginning of the pins.
    AGP card will have more than a 2" gap between plate and pins
    PCI card will have slightly more than a 1" gap between plate and pins
    PCI-express video card will have approximately 1 1/4" between plate and pins
    ISA card will have a little more than a 1/2" gap between the plate and pins

• Looking at the pins on the card or the connector openings on the slots themselves.

    AGP card has pins that alternate like bricks and the connectors on the motherboard are very close together
    PCI card has thicker pins that still appear quite small and look like a picket fence, and the connectors on
      the motherboard slot are much bigger than the AGP or PCI-e video  
    PCI-e video has very fine pins that have the picket fence look, and the connectors on the card slot are also    
      very fine
    ISA card has very thick pins and their slot has large connectors in which the metal contacts can easily
      be seen

The color of the card slots can have standard colors of: black for I.S.A. tan for P.C.I. brown for A.G.P.. But, that does not mean that all mother board vendors will stick with those colors. So, do not rely on the colors of the slots to be able to identify them.

An I/O, In and Out, bus slot allows the user to add components to there computer. Increasing the computers capability of performing to the users needs or wants. This could include adding a better sound card, video card, or network card, etcetera. But before the user can add any such card they will have to know what kind of cards the computer is capable of holding.

In this lesson box you will be reading about the common card slot types you will find while at Free Geek.

The ISA slot

The Industry Standard Architecture slot was first implemented in the early 1980's by IBM. This card was capable have transferring data to and from the computer. Opening up a world of possibilities from printing to networking with other computers. The 8 bit technology of the ISA card was soon improved upon and a 16 bit bus was implemented. Increasing the slot and card length allowed for data to transfer In and Out of the computer much faster. The bright side of the new architecture was that you could still use a 8 bit card in a 16 bit slot, allowing users who could only afford a new computer and not new cards to maintain the usability of there new computer.While the 8 bit ISA slot and 16 bit ISA slot differ in length they both start 1 in. from the back of the motherboard.

The PCI slot

The Peripheral Component Interconnect is a bus slot type commonly known as PCI. The PCI slot has a bit rate of 32 bits and can handle a multitude of different card type functions.From network cards to USB expansion if you have a need this is the slot to fill it. Physically the card slot start about 2 inches from the back of the motherboard. The slot itself is about ** inches long.

The AGP slot

The Accelerated Graphics Port or AGP is solely for graphics cards. From 32 to 64 bit of video pleasure. This is the card that allowed 3D graphics for gamers to get more out of there game. Physically the card slot starts about 3 inches from the back of the motherboard. The slot itself is about ** inches long.

The PCI-E slot

The Peripheral Component Interconnect Express card or PCI-E slots can very in sizes from ** to and is found about 1 1/4 in from the back of the mother board. There are two types of the card slot. One is for video card known as a PCI-E 16x slot type and the other is a small slot type known as PCI-E 8x. The 8x card slot is designed to be as versatile as the standard PCI slot in the wide array of cads that can function in this slot. This card slot is 4x faster then the speed of the PCI bus. That means that there is a Gigabyte of information going to and from the card.