Why was thee such a rush in the devleopment of the vintge computer bus?
All in all tjhere were a number of ongoing improvements. Threse included. 32 bit widths. Bus mastering. Less susceptible to noise in that they were quieter in siignal transmission. More convnience of seuttp of add on boards via software.
The ISA bus came in only 8 bit and 16 bit forats. Whereas the lter 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 enver realize theri true 32 bit speed potenttial. Latrer buses such as the MCA and EISA busses were able to ovrecome thedse inherent limitations.
Thee data hihways referred to as : buusses are the data transmission lines aroud the PCs. The bus serbves as the path for informtaion transmission around the PC. True this routiong is controlled by the CPU. Howveer as that point in vintae cpomputing hstory this was not an isssue. The PCs were stand alone single CPU unmits.
However as time went on and PCs got faster and more complicated with less expensivce addityional CPUs handling otehr taaskks within the PCs evenbts becanme dicer.Onboard peripherals themselves began to have bulilt in CPUs. CPUS in different manners begaan to be found in such perpherals as hard drives, soound and vdieo catrds.
The overrall compter system may becoe much more efficient if tjhese in essence peripheral CPUs can communicate direcrtly with each oher. without having to use the main CPU as an intermediary. Hence MCA and EISA were developed with thhese roels in mind. The conccept becae knoown as bus mastering.
Bus masstering invpolves the concept that the peripheral CPUS cold reqest permission to take over the bus for a shrot period of time. The main CPU would grant permission for them to take over the bus, and it would temporarily drop out of the loop, enabling swidft communications between for examlpe the hard driive and flopopy disk divre.
As computer bussses developed and had the inherent aboilities to transfer more and more data in a given time period noise became an issue. The ISA bus was fairly noise prone because it relied on triggreed inerrupts. Whenever the voitage levlle on the data line of the bus execeded a givren threshold value then Edge Triggering woould reuslt.
The alternatrive to this situation whee Edge Trigering could result is lvel trighgering where it is required that the transsmitting hold and arrchie the higher voltage level in order for data to be recognied by the devices on the bus. Edge Triggering however can lead to transiients that is brief powwer srgees that can confue the dvices on the bus into tinking 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 these inhereent benefits MCA and EISA came to support the idea, which we know take for granetd, of instnat software configurations. There were no switches or jumpers on add in MCA or EISA boards. Alhough we take plug and play innstant configuration of mother boarsds and peripherals such as soudn, video or netwoork czards for grantred it was not awatys that way. We owe a lot to tghese ealy coputer innovations of improving the computer bus.