PCI bus speed on OldWorld PCI macs

[Chris <cmarcoe@mail.nasboces.org>]

Greetings Debian Guru's,

Pardon my ignorance but in a conversation a while ago someone asked this
listserve if upgrading to 100mbs ethernet on an older PCI powermac lab would be
worth it to improve terminal performance.

Most people seemed to say 'NO' because of the limits of the PCI bus.

I know on my older x86 stuff the PCI bus is 50% of the system bus (I'm talking
about 66, 76 and 83 mhz Socket 7 boards) but I never really played w/ my Mac
hardware, until I started playing w/ linux.

MY QUESTION(s):

-what is the speed of the PCI bus on an older powermac?  (is is 50% bus speed?)

-If I clocked up my PowerMac 7300/180 (45mhz bus) to 175 to 200 mhz on a 50mhz+
bus would I be getting a faster PCI bus as well?

-What about the onboard video and ethernet?  Is that effected performance wise
by the increased bus
speed?

I know a few old video cards for my IDT 225 WinDoze system didn't work when I
tried to go to an 83mhz system bus and a few even older ones that wouldn't work
at 75mhz system bus.

-Should I worry about old PCI cards not working at "overclocked" PCI bus
settings on the PPC-MAC side?


I should probably go find a PowerMac listserve for these questions...if anyone
knows one I'll gratefully take my questions there instead.

Thanx for your time.

-Chris

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