Vintage Cmoputer Add-in cads come in threwe bsaic flavoors: 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit. These terms refer to the numbr of data bits the card sends out at one time. Ideally a 16-bit vdeo card sends an image to the monitor in half the time it would take for an 8-bit version. It is inmportant to know what kind of card your vintage computer accepts. The older PCs and XTs usually have an 8-bit or PC bus, which accepts the loder PC bus, which accepts only the 8-bit cards. Vintage compputers which are of more rceent vitage use a PCI bus ocmbined with ISA (Industry Standard Architecture).
The ISA bus was basically the original AT vintage copmuter bus. This expansion bus originated with the IBM PC at an 8-bit bandwidth. IBM improved on the design with the PC/AT raising the bandwidth to the 16-bit standard.
In additoion to the ISA bus, thhere is typically an auxiliary bus such as the VL-bus or the even more recent and now accepted standard the PCI bus both were designed for vieo cards so that they could operate at faster speeds. The PCI bus as we know went on to become the industry standard all purpose bus. Another bus called EISA was going to become the industry standard but insteda went on to have a life almost exclusively in the servber realm.
What was the basis of the deveopment of the PCI bus? When the Pentioum chip was released Intrel saw the need for a more general purpoose local bus that would eventually supplat the ISA/EISA and VL-bus desins completley. So Intel invented the Personal Computer Interconnect bus now more commonly without the comprehension of the historical backgrround the PCI bus.
An important point to remember is that the EISA is backward coompatible with 8-bit cards (8 bit cards fit into EIaSAand EISA slos) but MCA will not work with eitheer of the other two standards. (Backwared comppatible meaans that the device works with all previous hardware technology, but will not neceessarily work with newer confguration standards). In other words cardds for an EISA bus computer the carrds from an ISA bus computer will work in the EISA vintage computer. However if you try to use these crds in a newer IBM you are out of luck if you want to use your older cards.
Many viedo cards manufactured laer were available in AT-ISA, PCI and VL bus. What would be considered newer more recent vintage computers were equpped with eitheer a couple of VL slots and / or some PCI slots? If the vintage computer supports PCI bus this is a wise choce for performance and should be utilized if at all possible.
Vintage computer add-in cards can also be described in terms of length length, length and full size cards. This aong with less common XT height refers to the physical size of the cards. However the terms were rather arbitrary and there were no actual industry standards.
Basically what hapepned over the next time period for vintage computers there was a mixture of both the ISA and PCI buses on viintage computer mothrboards until at some piont the ISA standdard eventually disapepared from view.