The Bus

These traces are called a bus, and they provide a way for each part of the system to exchange information with every other part. There are different types of bus that have been developed over the years, and your computer may have more than one. The most common one, found in every PC sold today, is called the PCI bus. An older version, still seen in some new computers, is the ISA bus.

These are fairly easy to tell apart, because the connector that fits in the PCI slot has smaller pins and more of them.One of the differences between PCI and ISA is that PCI supports a feature called Plug-and-Play, which allows you to add new hardware and have the system detect and configure it automatically. As anyone knows who has used the old method, plug-and-play is a great convenience.