Hello, I'm going to be quite vague here so please forgive me.

My Dad (who's 400 miles away) has a PC he wants to add USB to.
the machine is a P233 running Win98 SE and from his description and my knowledge of it, I'm fairly sure that it's has a baby AT motherboard (it uses a DIN keyboard connector and measures (very) roughly 8x10 inches - which seems to fit with the info on this wonderful site) in a mini tower case.

He bought an expansion card for it, but though the card would have fitted the PCI slot, the metal bracket was too short to screw in to the case. The width needed is (again roughly) 4 inches.

I've been looking at various websites, but no one seems to say the actual width of the cards or the cases they fit. The only mention I can find is Belkin producing a 'normal' and 'low-profile' card.

So, to the point. My Dad wants me to buy another card for him and post it. whilst my knowledge is better than his, it still isn't great so, can ATX PCI cards fit AT cases? do I specifically have to look for a card to fit such an old machine? What type of card did he buy?

Any help at all is appreciated. Thanks for reading.

Peter

A PCI card is a PCI card period. It matters not what type of board it will be used on. If it came with a box, it should state somewhere what it is. If not ask the seller.

I just looked on an AT case of mine and there is no way to put and ISA in a PCI nor vice versa. I'm wondering if it is some other type of card altogether made for some obsolete riser or something similar.

Third hand details are amongst the hardest to work with. Get more info if you can.

Might it be a Mac card?

Sounds like a "half-size" card. Tiny and/or cheap PC's have used half-sized cards and cases in order to keep the size down. Basically, the metal bracket that sticks out the back is half as long as the standard.

Any decent manufacturer will also include the full-sized metal bracket so your dad can swap it (by unscrewing the half-sized bracket from the PCB itself). If not, have your dad return the card for a different one or contact the manufacturer for the part.

"Low-profile" might mean half-sized, or it could just be a change in the chip packaging. It's hard to tell what that would be...

Well, where do we start:

All PCs are not AT or ATX format. The big companies like Dell, Gateway, HP, and Compaq have been known to come out with their own configurations. They generally take generic PCI or EISA interface cards, with some restrictions.

There are other considerations. I have an Amptron M507 (generic P54C/i430FX AT format) mobo on this system here. But I found the Soundblaster Pro (old 8 bit) board will only fit in the end EISA slot. In the others, it hits the CPU fan, which is larger that was originally intended.

When the PCI spec originally came out, the full length boards were as long as this Soundblaster card, but they also specified a reduced length. But the only PCI boards I've seen that were full size those rare 3D video boards (most 3D boards are AGP). Not knowing what particular USB board you have, I'm willing to bet the board itself isn't much longer than the PCI connector - I don't think internal interference will be a problem. BTW: I hope your dad got USB 2.0; the older USB 1.0 is too slow to be very useful.

As for the metal backrail, they very in height a lot. It generally isn't a problem. But on the video board I have here, the backrail is so tall, I have to put a metal washer under it when I screw it to the case. Otherwise, it unseats the board from the PCI slot.

Good luck. If you don't figure it out, get the model number and manufacturer for the PC, as well as the USB board.

thanks for all your help,

Peter