In 1988, the Gang of Nine IBM PC compatible manufacturers put forth the 32-bit EISA standard and in the process retroactively renamed the AT bus to " ISA " to avoid infringing IBM's trademark on its PC / AT computer.

) incorporated many features more common to Intel-based PC's than to the commercial UNIX workstations of the era — for example, the Magnum R4000 included an EISA bus, used IBM PS / 2-compatible keyboards and mice, and used commodity chipset components whose control registers were mapped to memory locations set forth in the IBM AT standard.

This technical leadership and the rivalry with IBM was emphasized when the Systempro server was launched in late 1989-this was a true server product with standard support for a second CPU and RAID, but also the first product to feature the EISA bus, designed in reaction to IBM's MCA ( MicroChannel Architecture ).

The Extended Industry Standard Architecture ( in practice almost always shortened to EISA and frequently pronounced " eee-suh ") is a bus standard for IBM PC compatible computers.

By the time there was a strong market need for a bus of these speeds and capabilities, the VESA Local Bus and later PCI filled this niche and EISA vanished into obscurity.

In response, a group of PC manufacturers ( the " Gang of Nine "), led by Compaq, created a new bus, which was named the Extended ( or Enhanced ) Industry Standard Architecture, or " EISA ".

The SystemPro, being one of the first PC-style systems designed as a network server, was built from the ground up to take full advantage of the EISA bus.

Thus, even systems which didn't use the EISA bus gained the advantage of having the ISA standardized, which contributed to its longevity.

The Gang of Nine was the informal name given to the consortium of personal computer manufacturing companies who came together in 1988 to create the EISA bus.

The ISA bus was further extended for use with 32-bit processors as Extended Industry Standard Architecture ( EISA ).

However, problems continued when the 486DX-50 was installed in local bus systems due to the high bus speed, making it rather unpopular with mainstream consumers as local bus video was considered a requirement at the time, though it remained popular with users of EISA systems.

For several years EISA and MCA battled it out in the server arena, but in 1996 IBM effectively conceded defeat when they themselves produced some EISA bus servers.

In the event, the new EISA bus was itself a commercial failure beyond the high end: By the time the cost of implementing EISA was reduced to the extent that it would be implemented in most desktop PCs, the much cheaper VESA Local Bus had removed most of the need for it in desktop PCs ( though it remained common in servers due to for example the possibility of data corruption on hard disk drives attached to VLB controllers ), and Intel's PCI bus was just around the corner.

Older ones were based on the 16-bit ISA bus or the transitional 32-bit VESA and EISA buses.

Both systems supported EISA bus and SGI proprietary GIO64 expansion bus via a riser card.

All models, except for the 712 series machines also use the Wax ASIC to provide an EISA adapter, a second serial port and support for the HIL bus.

Ironically, one of the benefits to come out of the EISA standard was a final codification of the standard to which ISA slots and cards should be held ( in particular, clock speed was fixed at an industry standard of 8. 33 MHz ).

Popular buses which are used on more than one architecture are also abstracted, such as ISA, EISA, PCI, PCI-E, etc., allowing drivers to also be highly portable with a minimum of code modification.

IBM's competitors jointly responded by introducing the EISA expansion system which, unlike MCA, was fully compatible with the existing ISA cards.

AST was one of the members of the Gang of Nine which developed the EISA bus.

For servers the technical limitations of the old ISA were too great, and in late 1988 the " Gang of Nine ", led by Compaq, announced a rival high performance bus-Extended Industry Standard Architecture ( EISA ).

ELSA Winner 1000 for ISA and EISA.

Unlike MCA, EISA can accept older XT and ISA boards — the lines and slots for EISA are a superset of ISA.

The competing EISA open standard was still unable to offer enough performance improvement over ISA to provide a solution.

A " VLB slot " itself was simply an additional edge connector placed in-line with the traditional ISA or EISA connector, with this extended portion often colored a distinctive brown.

The result was a normal ISA or EISA slot being additionally capable of accepting VLB compatible cards.

Traditional ISA cards remained compatible as they would not have pins past the normal ISA or EISA portion of the slot.

EISA, the 32-bit extended version of ISA championed by Compaq, was used on some PC motherboards until 1997, when Microsoft declared it a " legacy " subsystem in the PC 97 industry white-paper.

POST cards are inserted into an expansion slot, and are available in ISA ( also supporting EISA ), PCI, parallel port, and other variants ( Mini PCIe, for laptop computers, is supported by some cards, but with restrictions ).

On newer EISA, PCI, and later systems the Edge / Level Control Registers ( ELCRs ) control the mode per IRQ line, effectively making the mode of the 8259 irrelevant for such systems with ISA buses.

Supported ISA, EISA, and VLB.

EISA was also available on some non-IBM compatible machines such as the AlphaServer, HP 9000-D, SGI Indigo2 and MIPS Magnum.

In the event, neither MCA nor EISA really caught on.

As required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act ( EISA ), with the introduction of advanced-technology vehicles in the U. S. new information should be incorporated in the Monroney label of new cars and light-duty trucks sold in the country, such as ratings on fuel economy, greenhouse gas emissions, and other air pollutants.

Within a few years of its arrival in 1992, PCI had largely superseded Micro Channel, EISA and VESA.

But although very few EISA systems were sold, it had achieved its purpose: IBM no longer controlled the computer industry.

* IBM PC Server 320 ( PCI / EISA )

* IBM PC Server 325 ( PCI / EISA )

* IBM PC Server 330 ( PCI / EISA )

* IBM PC Server 520 ( PCI / EISA or PCI / MCA )

* IBM PC Server 704 ( PCI / EISA )