VL-Bus

The VESA Local Bus (usually abbreviated to VL-Bus or VLB) was mostly used in personal

computers. VESA (Video Electronics Standards Association) Local Bus worked alongside
the ISA bus; it acted as a high-speed conduit for memory-mapped I/O andDMA, while the
ISA bus handled interrupts and port-mapped I/O.

(VESA Local-BUS) A peripheral bus from VESA that was primarily used in computers with
486 CPUs. VL-bus provided a high-speed data path between the CPU and peripherals (video,
disk, etc.). It was a 32-bit bus that supported bus mastering and ran at speeds up to 40 MHz.
With up to three VL-bus slots on the motherboard, each slot was in two parts: one Micro
Channel slot along with an ISA, EISA or a second Micro Channel slot. See PC data buses
Historical overview :

A VLB slot itself was an extension of an existing ISA slot. Indeed, either a VLB or an
ISA card could be plugged into a VLB slot. The extended portion was usually colored a
distinctive brown. This made VLB cards quite long, reminiscent of the ISA expansion cards
from the old XT days (which were long because of low component density and high chip
count requiring more printed circuit board space, rather than because of a long edge
connector.) The addition resembled a PCI slot, and indeed VLB and PCI use the same
physical connector.

The VLS was designed as a stopgap solution to the problem of the ISA bus’s limited
bandwidth. VLB had several flaws that served to limit its useful life substantially:

 80486 dependence. The VESA Local Bus relied heavily on the Intel 80486 CPU's

memory bus design. When the P5 Pentiumprocessor started to gain mass acceptance, circa
1995, there were major differences in its bus design, and the VESA Local Bus was not
easily adaptable. This also made moving the bus to non-x86 architectures nearly
impossible. Few Pentium motherboards with VLB slots were ever made.

 Limited number of slots available. Most PCs that used VESA Local Bus had only one
or two slots available, as opposed to 5 or 6 ISA slots. This was because, as a direct branch
of the 80486 memory bus, the VESA Local Bus did not have the electrical ability to drive
more than 1 or 2 (or 3 at the most) cards at a time.

 Reliability problems. The same electrical problems that limited the VESA Local Bus
to 2 or 3 slots also limited its reliability. Glitches between cards were common, especially
on low-end motherboards, and when important devices such as hard disk controllers were
attached to the bus, there was the all-too-common possibility of massive data corruption.

 Installation woes. The length of the slot and number of pins made VLB cards
notoriously difficult to install and remove. The sheer mechanical effort required was
stressful to both the card and the motherboard, and breakages were not uncommon. This
was compounded by the extended length of the card logic board; often there was not
enough room in the PC case to angle the card into the slot, requiring it to be pushed with
great force straight down into the slot. To avoid excessive flexing of the motherboard
during this action the chassis and motherboard had to be designed with good, relatively
closely spaced supports for the motherboard, which was not always the case, and the
person inserting the board had to distribute the downward force evenly across its top edge.
 The length of a VLB slot, and the difficult installation that resulted from it, led to an
alternate expansion of the acronym: Very Long Bus.

Despite these problems, the VESA Local Bus was very commonplace on 486
motherboards. Probably a majority of 486-based systems had a VESA Local Bus video card,
although early 486 systems never had VLB slots, as VLB debuted years after the introduction
of the 486 processor. By 1996, the Pentium (driven by Intel's Triton
chipset and PCI architecture) had eliminated the 80486 market and the VESA Local Bus with
it. Many of the last 80486 motherboards made have PCI slots instead of (or sometimes in
addition to) VLB slots. Most boards had either PCI or VLB slots alongside the still-ubiquitous
ISA slots. So-called "VIP" (VESA/ISA/PCI) boards, with all three slot types, were unusual.

Technical data :