stypikes said:
I'd like to add a USB 2.0/1394 combo card to an old PC.
I've found 3 cards, all of which are suitable for PCI 2.2 bus.
But that old PC has PCI 2.1 bus, according to its manual.
If I can't find any card that is suitable for PCI 2.1, can I just use a
PCI 2.2 card?
I wrote up a nice long reply, but decided not to post it,
because what it boils down to, is you're going to have to
plug it in and try it. There are no guarantees with old PCs,
and not a lot of predictive abilities, to guess at what will
work and what will not. (440BX era machines seemed to have
a few problems with modern cards, for example. And we still
don't know exactly why.)
The card keying on PCI cards, is there to prevent damage. But
other than that, many things can happen, and all you can do is
try the card and see what happens.
Combo cards are especially nasty, because of all the variations
on how they are designed. I would be much more worried about
that aspect, than the PCI bus revision number of 2.1 or 2.2.
Paul