[ The PC Guide | Systems and Components Reference Guide | Motherboard and System Devices | System Buses | System Bus Functions and Features ]

Bus Interfacing

On a system that has multiple buses, circuitry must be provided by the chipset to connect the buses and allow devices on one to talk to devices on the other. This device is called a "bridge", the same name used to refer to a piece of networking hardware that connects two dissimilar networks. By far the most commonly found bridge is the PCI-ISA bridge, which is part of the system chipset on a Pentium or Pentium Pro PC. The PCI bus also has a bridge to the processor bus; you can see these devices under "System devices" in the Device Manager in Windows 95.

Next: Bus Mastering

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