Is PCI becoming extinct?

I have a Delta1010LT and a Delta66 and love 'em. I can foresee that in about a years time I will be ready to upgrade my PC, but Motherboards seem to have less PCI slots these days. I'm also considering another delta card. If I wait too long, will they disappear altogether? Is there a cheap PCI-e to PCI bridge solution?

good timing.

I was really annoyed at Best Buy when I bought my new PC over Christmas - the specs on their site specifically said "PCI Slots - 4". Get the computer, open it up to stick my 0404 in, and what do I see? Four PCIx1 slots. Thankfully a friend had a Tascam USB he wasn't using, but it was pretty stupid.

Similar story here. I bought a new Dell around last November and before doing so, I specifically rang the Dell people to ask about the PCI slot. I've got an M-Audio Audiophile 192. Great card. Very stable drivers. The PC was a 510s (slim). I was assured that the PCI slots were standard. What I didn't know was that standard came in 2 flavours. Half height and full height. When it arrived, of course the card didn't fit at all. Not happy! Fortunately the other PC here isn't that much older and did the trick just fine. Never the less it really was a nasty trap. That's the thing about standards - there's just so many of them! In response to the OP, I'm sure PCI cards will be around a while yet but will start to become available as PCIe or whatever standard is prevalent. Isn't Digidesign stuff PCI based? At this point in time and in the foreseeable future I'm sure there will be a call for standard type expansion slots for many things, not just sound cards.

thats why I went with firewire/usb for my interface...but its not without its own problems....those dice II chips still drive me crazy...picked up one of the new focusrite interfaces and it is a pain....I sort of miss my old audiophile 24-96 i got back in 01!!!!! at least the drivers worked!!!

I believe there will be mobo's available quite a while which are housing at least one pci slot. There are so much pci equipment out there that are no where near to be dumped away. PCIe addon cards do exist today, but they are still not yet mainstream. There are only few pcie choices for a sound card. cheers

Plus the latency with PCI is alot lower than usb or firewire.

A good reason why I still like to build my own systems, there are still plenty of well priced motherboards with PCI slots but I expect that to change over the next couple of platform generations. Not really a big deal, I expect the lack of 64 bit drivers will force a soundcard upgrade for me before PCI disappears altogether. I don't know if there are/will be any options like adapters, do those exist for earlier standards like ISA, EISA(?)? I don't even remember what they were called, I upgraded from those when I could and never looked back.

In the last 30 years of personal computing (wait while I blow the dust off my TRS-80 Mark I) there is only one rule: EVERYTHING BECOMES EXTINCT PCI is only 15 years old, but that is nearly 10 generations of computer lifetimes. Its only a matter of time...

Adapters available