computer on PCI card?

[jagec]

I remember a while back I saw this very strange device.

It was an entire computer motherboard (with proc, RAM slots, IDE plugs and everything), that had a PCI connector on one end, to plug into another motherboard.

Apparently these things were used in server farms, or for distributed computing projects, or something. Anyone know what I'm talking about?

I think I'd like to get one of those to monkey around with...

 

[phasmatis_nox]

I remember seeing on on ebay once. So it does exist. I think they were most frequently used on servers.

 

[zandor]

I think you're talking about a passive backplane. It's basically a mobo w/ nothing but slots, then the stuff that usually goes on a mobo is on a card.
They're typically used in embedded applications.

 

[Bitchnmoan]

Something like this?

 

[TBird]

passive backplane was the old schoold version of this. blade technology is the latest flavor. The chassis can share and load balance network connectivity and stuff. it's pretty cool. ibm has up to 4 procs on one single blade. sweet. with server consolidation being on everyone's mind, this is a great solution. vmware is cool too. dice up a fatty server into lots of little virtual machines. ol' mcdonald had a farm.........

 

[kronchev]

yep, its just space-saving. if you could run them wtihout the pain part (not sure if you can) itd be neat to get one and have a super small comp

 

[jagec]

I found some stuff on ebay but it looks like it only works in a Sun. Basically it's designed so that you can run Windows apps natively in Solaris.

I was hoping to find something that had either Windows or *nix drivers, so I could run two OS's concurrently, or at the very least use it as a RAM disk. But that looks like a no...oh well.

 

[zandor]

Blades don't have anything to do w/ passive backplanes. It used to be a lot of machines had a passive backplane & the CPU on a card. I had a 386 like this once. Now it's pretty much an embedded thing.
The whole blade thing is about fitting lots of CPUs on a rack. I'm not sure why they use passive backplanes anymore, and for what it's worth they're getting rare. But it's the embedded space... they use all sorts of wierd form factors. Ever heard of a PISA slot? It's a combo PCI + ISA slot used for these "CPU on a card" setups. Basically it's a way of making a "computer on a card" that plugs into a backplane w/ both PCI and ISA slots. Then there's Compact PCI... another interesting setup. My personal favorite is PC-104 though. Er... what's the PCI version? PC-104+ I think? They're little cards you stack together to build a machine. Each one plugs into the next.

 

[mobiux]

I've seen some that are actually intel 810 motherboards, that basically just draw the power though the slot.

It has the processor, ram, video, nic, and a laptop HD on a pcb card.

Could be used for really inexpensive upgrades.

The mouse, keyboard, video and lan ports were all on the backplane.

 

[jagec]

Originally posted by zandor
Then there's Compact PCI... another interesting setup. My personal favorite is PC-104 though. Er... what's the PCI version? PC-104+ I think? They're little cards you stack together to build a machine. Each one plugs into the next.

haha, it's like those little plastic balls you have to make out of the six sides...except that it costs thousands of dollars

oooo...
aaaahh....
neat!

 

[Proneax]

http://computers.kontron.com/products/pdproductdetail.cfm?keyProduct=38576&kps=999&kp=78

here's a single board computer that uses a Pentium M.

I think it would be cool to have one of these in your system, to act as a fileserver/webserver/firewall/router/whatever.

 

[skritch]

The general class of devices you're discussing are referred to as "SBC"'s, or "Single-Board Computers". Go forth and Google.