Question Is there any practical use for the legacy PCI slot in 2024 on older boards?

[box o rocks]

I've got several machines that still have the legacy PCI slot. I know that old slot is slow as molasses by today's standards, but it sure would be nice if it was useful instead of sitting there useless. Anyone using their PCI slot for anything?

 

[COLGeek]

I haven't had a system with a PCI slot for several years.

They might come in handy with some sorts of legacy hardware, i.e. IEEE-1394 "FireWire" adapter, or a SCSI adapter, etc.

 

[NedSmelly]

I haven't had a system with a PCI slot for several years.

They might come in handy with some sorts of legacy hardware, i.e. IEEE-1394 "FireWire" adapter, or a SCSI adapter, etc.

Yep. But also depends upon your OS. Some Firewire and SCSI cards stopped receiving driver support around XP or Win7. We used to run SCSI film scanners off Adaptec PCI cards. I'm not aware of any 2024 mobos having PCI, but it was common amongst those still supporting XP in their chipset drivers (e.g. >10 years old).

 

[BFG-9000]

How else would you run a V5 5500? The AGP 1.0 versions only support 3.3v so unless you want to find an old Pentium III (or rarely, 4), the 32-bit PCI version is the way to go. Of course for XP support though, Ivy Bridge is the latest you can go.

Every industrial board manufacturer still makes modern boards with PCI, but it's not native and the PCIe to PCI bridge chips they use don't agree with everything. Same situation with the USB-to-ISA adapters. So actual industrial users controlling their CNC machines will understandably nurse their vintage computers along for as long as possible in an incredibly hostile environment full of metal dusts and sharing power with 200A welders and plasma cutters.

Yes, PCI's 133MB/s half-duplex can even constrain things like a single USB 3.0 port or gigabit ethernet in full-duplex. But if you are out of other slots and don't really care about performance, you can still add more stuff like USB or SATA ports with it. It's rare nowadays to use anything but the x16 slot with everything built-into the motherboard, but if lightning takes out your ethernet port or you simply wish to add another port to convert your old PC into a router, the slots are there. And well, if you happen to have old PCI cards laying around unused, then you wouldn't even need to go to the store.