How to tell if my motherboard supports 3v PCI?

[Ribbit]

See subject.

There's a PCI card I want to install which apparently only supports 3V PCI. I read a post on a forum from a guy who installed it in a really old Pentium machine which only supported 5V, and ended up destroying the card. My board's a bit newer than that (Asus P5A), but I'd still like to be sure, and I can't find anything in the manual to confirm or deny.

[Johnny Ray]

PCI connector types:

32-bit 5V: Connectors with the notch farthest from the backplate
32-bit 3.3V: Connectors with the notch closest to the backplate
32-bit Universal PCI: Connectors with notches in both the 5V and 3.3V positions
64-bit 5V: 32-bit 5V PCI connectors with additional pins
64-bit 3.3V: 32-bit 3.3V PCI connectors with additional pins
64-bit Universal PCI: 32-bit Universal PCI connectors with additional pins
32-bit and 64-bit cards work together. 5V connectors (cards or slots) fit with 5V or with Universal PCI connectors. 3.3V connectors fit with 3.3V or with Universal PCI connectors. Universal PCI connectors fit with 5V, 3.3V, or Universal connectors.

http://www.cyberresearch.com/content/tutorials/tutorial12.htm

Hope this helps.

[Ribbit]

Thanks, but I already knew about that. (Though I remembered the notches the wrong way round ) I was wondering if there was some other PCI voltage issue I wasn't aware of.

I looked at the PCI slots on the P5A, and they all have only the 5V key. So I looked at the slots on the newest motherboard I have to hand, my Tyan Tiger MP, and that also has just the 5V key. So I went to Asus' and Tyan's web sites, looked at photos of their latest boards, and guess what? Their PCI slots also have just the 5V key.

3.3V PCI slots are very rare when they are not 66MHz or faster (which is in itself still not exactly common), and the card in question is a normal consumer wireless 54g PCI card. I doubt these card makers are building hardware which only works in a few special computers.

One thing I found is that these cards tend to demand a PCI 2.2-compliant system (I'm sure my Tiger MP supports that, while the P5A manual says something about PCI 2.1). Is that likely to have something to do with it?

Here is the post from the guy who burned his card (2nd from bottom). Is he confused, or talking rubbish, or could it have been something wrong with his PC?