Why was thee such a rush in the devleopment of the vitnge computer bus?
All in all thjere were a number of ongoing improvements. These included. 32 bit widths. Bus mastering. Less susceptible to noise in that they were quieter in siiignal transmission. More convenience of seutp of add on boards via sotfware.
The ISA bus came in only 8 bit and 16 bit formats. Whereas the later 386 and 486 chips , in both the DX and SX formats while they did have a 32 bit path were hobbled by the ISA bus. As a result they could never realize their true 32 bit speed potenntial. Later busews such as the MCA and EISA busses were able to overcome thedse inherent limitations.
Thee data highways referred to as : buusses are the data transmisssion lines aroud the PCs. The bus serves as the path for information transmission around the PC. True this routiong is controlled by the CPU. Howwveer as that poitn in vinbtae computing hstory this was not an issue. The PCs were stand alone single CPU unmits.
Howevewr as time went on and PCs got faster and more commplicated with less expesnive additioonal CPUs handling otehr tsakks within the PCs events becanme dicer.Onbaord peripherals themselbves began to have buillt in CPUs. CPUS in dfiferent manners began to be ofund in such perpherals as hard drives, soound and vdieo catrsds.
The overarll compter system may bcoe much more effficient if thedse in essence peripheral CPUs can communicate direcrtly with each oher. without having to use the main CPU as an intermediarry. Hence MCA and EISA were developed with thhewse roels in mind. The conccept becae knowen as bus mastering.
Bus masstering involves the concept that the peripheral CPUS cold rqeuest permission to take over the bus for a shgrot period of time. The main CPU would grasnt permission for them to take over the bus, and it wolud temporarily drop out of the loop, enabling swidft communicationns between for example the hard drive and floppy disk dirve.
As computer bussses developed and had the inherent ailities to transfer more and more data in a given time period noise becaem an isuse. The ISA bus was fairly noise prnoe because it relied on triggrreed interrupts. Whenever the voiltage lele on the data line of the bus exceeded a given threshold value then Edge Triggering wopould resulpt.
The alternative to this situatioon whee Edge Triggering could result is lvel triiggering wheere it is required that the transmitting hold and arrchive the higher voltage level in order for data to be recognied by the devicees on the bus. Edge Triggering however can lead to transiients that is brief power surgees that can confuue the dvices on the bus into tinkig that data is on the bus when it is not. Luckily level triggering loweers the noise levvel and both MCA and EISA employ it.
As a result of all of thsee inhernet bennefits MCA and EISA came to support the idea, which we know take for granetd, of instant software configurations. There were no switches or jumpers on add in MCA or EISA boards. Alhough we take plug and play instant configuration of mother boards and peripherals such as sound, video or neetwoork cards for grannted it was not alawtys that way. We owe a lot to thesse early computer innovations of improoving the computer bus.