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MCA

Short for Micro Channel Architecture, MCA was introduced by IBM in 1987. MCA, or the Micro Channel bus, was a competition for ISA bus. The MCA bus offered several additional features over the ISA such as a 32-bit bus (although there was also a 16-bit bus), ran at 10MHz, automatically configure cards (similar to what Plug and Play is today), and bus mastering for greater efficiency.

MCA or Micro Channel Architecture network card

Above is a graphic example of a MCA network card and what a MCA card may look like. One of the major downfalls of the MCA bus was it being a proprietary bus and because of competing bus designs. The MCA bus never became widely used and has since been fazed out of the desktop computers.

  • Help and support on the MCA bus and other computer bus standards can be found on our computer bus help page.

Also see: Bus, EISA, ISA, Motherboard definitions

 

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