Robin Williams Mac OS X Book, Jaguar Edition, The

PCI Bus and Slots

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) is yet another bus system. A bus is a system of hardware, software, and wiring that lets different parts of your computer communicate with each other. There are different kinds of buses, and PCI is focused on the expansion slots, which are described on page 673. PCI is now installed on most desktop computers, so if your computer was built in 1998 or later, it has PCI (except early iMacs). If your machine doesn’t have PCI, it has what’s called NuBus, Apple’s prior technology.

When you read the specifications for a computer, it often brags about how many PCI slots it has. The more, the better if you plan to expand.