How To Tell If Laptop Has A Free Pci Slot

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SLOT TYPES


Typical high-performance PC with two 3.3V/64-bit PCI slots

The image above shows a typical high-performance PC (year 2001) with some 64-bit slots. In the image you can see that there are four 32-bit slots (with the short connector) and two 64-bit slots (with the long connector). Free lotsa slots coins.

The keying (the little white lines inside the connector) show the I/O signalling type used on the PCI-bus. In this case, the 32-bit slots are 5 Volt slots. The 64-bit slots use in this case 3.3 Volt signalling. In principle also 3.3V/32-bit slots can exist, but this is hardly ever used. 5V/64-bit slots do exist as well in certain machines such as industrial PCs.

A slot that uses a 66 MHz PCI clock, always will use 3.3 Volt signalling. In fact there is no way to see from the connector if a slot is using a 33 MHz clock or a 66 MHz one.

The easiest way to tell if it's PCI-E is by how much it is offset from your regular PCI slots (meaning how the back edge of the slots line up with each other). AGP is offset by almost an inch. Find empty PCI / PCIE slots without opening computer case Sometimes you need to find what empty PCI or other slots are available on your PC without opening computer case. For example when you have only remote access to the PC, or simply don't fancy crawling under a desk and disconnecting bunch or cables.


Question

  • What types and how many type of PCI slots are in this PC?

Answer

S32PCI64 and FILAR ONLY FIT IN 3V3 SLOTS

A S32PCI64 card can work only in a 3.3 Volt slot
The S32PCI64 and the FILAR can only work in slots that use 3.3 Volt signalling. That means you should check if indeed the 3.3 Volt key is as shown in the picture above (a key near the panel of the computer).

The cards will work in 66 MHz and 33 MHz environments and can work in 32-bit and 64-bit slots. So it is only the PCI signalling type of 3.3 Volt that is important to look at.

Anyway, the S32PCI64 or FILAR will mechanically not fit in 5 Volt slots, so there is no risk of breaking anything.


A NOTE ON PMC TO PCI ADAPTERS

Be careful when you use a PMC to PCI adapter. These adapters (such as the ones from Technobox) are useful for putting (old) PMC cards from the VMEbus days into PCs. Usually these adapters fit in both 5V and 3.3V slots (i.e. they have a dual voltage keying). If the PMC (such as the.SSP or SPS) plugged on is 5V only, one must of course not put it into a 3.3V slot even though the keying would permit one to do so.

How To Tell If Laptop Has A Free Pci Slot Machines

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How To Tell If Laptop Has A Free Pci SlotErik van der Bij - 27 March 2002

This page contains information on how you can identify an unknown PCI card. If you are a Microsoft Windows user and have an 'Unknown device' or 'Unknown PCI device' in Device Manager, follow the steps below.

Microsoft Windows users

Microsoft Windows users can look at the registry to determine the manufacturer or model of a PCI device installed in their computer. To do this, follow the steps below. If you do not want to edit the registry and want to use a different program, skip to the next section.

Through the System Information

How To Tell If Laptop Has A Free Pci Slot Machine

  1. Open the Windows System Information (msinfo32) tool.
  2. Click Components to expand the available components on the computer.
  3. Click Problem Devices and locate the PnP ID for the device you want to identify.
  1. As shown in the example above, you have lots of useful information to identify the card. In this example, the VEN aka vendor is 5333. Searching for this vendor on the PCI database shows that this particular PCI device is an 'S3 Graphics Co. product.' You can find a link to the PCI database on our motherboard links.

Through the Windows registry and early versions of Windows

  1. Open the registry by clicking Start and in the run line type regedit.
  2. In the Registry Editor, access the registry key below.

Windows 2000 users
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
SYSTEM
ControlSet0001
Enum
Windows 95, 98, and ME users
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
Enum
PCI

  1. In the key above, see folders similar to the example below.
  1. As shown in the example above, you have lots of useful information to identify the card. In this example, the VEN aka vendor is 5333. Searching for this vendor in the PCI database shows that this particular PCI device is an 'S3 Graphics Co. product.' You can find a link to the PCI database on our motherboard links.

Other software solutions

If you visit the PCI database page, it contains several third-party solutions and links to software to identify a PCI device in your computer. You can find a link to the PCI database on our motherboard links page.

Hardware solution

If you cannot determine the PCI card using software, the next best solution is to examine the card. It is common that the card has the manufacturer and model number printed on the card. If no model or manufacturer is listed, look for another identification on the card, such as an FCC identification number. For additional information about FCC numbers, see our FCC definition page.

Additional information

  • See the PCI definition for further information on PCI and related links.