For those of you with older hardware.
What do you use your PCI legacy slots for in 2019?
There are some kind of brackets for 2,5" drives that fit in the PCI-slot, but they don't actually use the PCI-slot in any other way than just as a holder...
http://ggsp.se/oevrigt/3289-deltaco-...PCI&results=73
Seems like a waste of 25w but what other uses are there nowadays?
Hiatus
Digital TV / Satellite Cards some of which were expensive, IDE / raid card for hooking up old drives to get stuff off them, or even using them, sound cards maybe if you have an expensive old style one, you can get PCI SSD interfaces., raid cards for both IDE and SATA, dial up modem card, yes some people are still using them, if you haven't got a collection of old stuff it's probably not worth bothering with though.
Thanks for your tips!
I've been considering switching my PCIe SATA card for a PCI one to free up a PCIe-slot in my HP Z600...
Would that have to effect the performance of the SATA drives compared to running PCIe?
My current card is a 3GB/s rated one, so I can't really afford to get any slower and the PCI SATA cards I've found so far are all 1.5GB/s...
Would one of those PCI to PCIe x1 adapters make a difference?
Could I plug in on of those and run my current PCIe SATA card through that in 3GB/s?
Not quite sure if it would physically fit in my case, but that's another bridge to burn if it comes to that.
I know. Just buy a new computer, right?
But I like my Z600 and I want to keep on using it as long as possible.
And I like to have all my slots occupied if I can find a good reason for it (and sometimes if I can't)...
Hiatus
Edit: Found 3GB/s SATA cards on ebay. That's where they were hiding.
PCI maxes out at 133MBps (~1Gbps). So even a 1.5Gbps SATA card will be limited by the PCI interface.
Unless you have a very slow hard drive you will definitely lose performance by going to a PCI SATA card.
I had a feeling there would be a bottleneck somewhere with the PCI/SATA idea...
Thank's for the info!
So, the PCI SATA/RAID-card solution wouldn't really work for anything other than as a novelty item in the real world.
I've already got an IDE - USB2 cabinet for my old IDE drives with adapters for 2,5" drives. Otherwise, that would have been a great use for one of the PCI slots.
I don't watch TV, so that one wouldn't have any practical use for me either.
Since this is my workstation, I mainly do work on it and I don't even have speakers connected to it. So the sound card path is pretty much a waste of 25watts as well I'm afraid...
An internal 56/6K modem though... Wouldn't that be something to spend a weekend on? You could hardly get those to work properly even on the hardware it was built for back in the days, on win 3.11 or win95. I remember the joy when I realized you could plug a 3.5mm jack in the back of it to make it shut up and I could sneak online in the middle of the night without waking my parents.
Well. Memory lane won't get me anywhere.
Damn it!
Seems like the SSD holder in my first post would be the most reasonable option.
Well, that sucks.
Wait a minute. Maybe there's something else.
What about extra displays? They wouldn't be effected that much by the slower transfer speed, would they?
One of those old Matrox cards with 4 DVI-ports for example? Note that I don't do any gaming at all (even uninstalled Microsoft Solitaire Collection) and that my software is pretty much as old as the computer itself. Nothing newer than 2015 other than win10.
My Quadro FX4800 outputs 3 displays max. A couple of extra displays for my virtual machines would be nice...
I don't need more GPU-power for my workload. Just extra display outputs.
Any suggestions on how this idea would potentially bite me in the ass down the line?
Am I missing something vital in my new drawn plan? Would for example mix-matched video cards mess it up for me?
I bet win10 drivers for old video cards are hard to come by...
It would be sweet though.
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Just thought of something else, extra USB ports? you can get USB3 PCI cards. Example StarTech.com 4 Port PCI SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Adapter Card: Amazon.co.uk: Amazon.co.uk:
The USB3 route could be a way to go...
That's a feature that my old workstation does not have. There is a Texas Instrument based PCIe2 USB3 controller which is recommended for my system, but since I have no available PCIe-slots, that never worked for me.
The speed is obviously an issue, but it will at least be faster than USB2...
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