Resolved A cursed Mac

[repairedCheese]

Can confirm with MacTracker that all 4GB max models have 64-bit PCI and no PCI-X.
There seem to be no physical differences between the two slots though.

What is the difference between 64-bit PCI slot and PCI-X slot?

I need to identify what kind of slots are available from my computer based on the shape of the slot. So far, I can easily tell the difference between 32-bit PCI and PCIe slots but I am having problem

superuser.com

Your best bet is to see if you can find anything in OF or System Profiler I think. Not sure how useful those will be though.

Between this and the fact that my G5 has empty space for ram slots to be soldered in, it's making it pretty clear that telling a PCI model apart from a PCIX is just down to how much ram it can take. Apparently PCI isn't just PCI. I wouldn't be surprised if there's almost no differences on the non-PCIE G5 boards.

And thus, my headache is now worse.

 

[1042686]

Here’s my a1047

Indeed those are 64bit pci, not pcix.

 

[repairedCheese]

Indeed those are 64bit pci, not pcix.

And I'm guessing you really can't tell the PCI ports from PCIX ports on a PMG5 just by looking. Otherwise I don't think anyone else would be sharing my confusion.

 

[RogerWilco6502]

And I'm guessing you really can't tell the PCI ports from PCIX ports on a PMG5 just by looking. Otherwise I don't think anyone else would be sharing my confusion.

Yeah, from what I've seen of the PCI spec (which is indeed headache-inducingly complex with so many minor variations), it looks like you can't tell them apart just by looking at them.

 

[z970]

And thus, my headache is now worse.

Up your water intake and apply a hot compress.

Works well.

 

[1042686]

Yeah man, pci-x look identical to 64bit pci, just that 3.3v pci64 top out at 66mhz & 3.3v pci-x can run up to 533mhz. Their notches are identical however so are backwards compatible back to 3.3v 32bit pci. The kicker there is the bus will only run as fast as the slowest card installed.

Anyhow, yeah this was a good exercise as I’ve not taken a close look at the pci slots in the a1047 until now.

 

[repairedCheese]

Yeah man, pci-x look identical to 64bit pci, just that 3.3v pci64 top out at 66mhz & 3.3v pci-x can run up to 533mhz. Their notches are identical however so are backwards compatible back to 3.3v 32bit pci. The kicker there is the bus will only run as fast as the slowest card installed.

Anyhow, yeah this was a good exercise as I’ve not taken a close look at the pci slots in the a1047 until now.

I knew they'd switched from the Motorola G4 line of ppc processors over to a variant of the IBM POWER4 ppc64 chips, and I can only imagine that was done for cost saving measures. But I hadn't considered what else had been done in the name of cost saving.

But then, I bought this wanting weird hardware, and even if it's a lower end model, I can't say I'm disappointed in finding out there was a whole host of kinds of PCI I'd never even heard of. PCI-X was weird enough, but this takes the cake.

 

[defjam]

I just checked the slots on my 1.8GHz PowernMac G5 and they're the same as shown in your picture. It appears Apple decided to use the 3.3v 64-bit PCI / PCI-X physical connectors on all of the PowerMac motherboards. Learned something new today.

 

[1042686]

But we didn’t get to pci-e yet