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To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (49362)	7/30/2001 11:51:01 AM
From: pgerassi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 275872

Dear Tench: You have hit on why some PCI cards are not bus masters. If they are never going to need to control something, they do not need an embedded CPU on them. Think of winmodems, simple serial and parallel port cards, digital control boards, fire wire adapters and other simple PCI cards. Some motherboards do not have ISA slots any more so, these simple function cards must be placed in PCI slots. They will never need to pay for a embedded CPU to allow it to act as a bus master. Now they can keep $5 to $10 out of a card selling for $15 to $25. It is high enough to both reduce the market and decrease the profits per card. Some of these are impulse buys and customers get ticked when a seemingly simple card no longer works or crashes the system. They usually blame the system and not the card they just installed (the common refrain, "I just don't see how a simple _______ card ****** my computer!"). Pete