Half a croissant, on a plate, with a sign in front of it saying '50c'
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Fir tree-shaped interface

Unambiguous with lots of lines
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Motherboard buses are long and hard to manipulate in a cramped space. It's easy to shove things in badly or not at all and they take up a lot of space. Given a fir tree shape, each branch could provide two lines, there would be no way anything could be inserted in the wrong place and the interface would be shorter.
That's it.
nineteenthly, Aug 21 2009

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       there really should be a law protecting us from the use of the word christmas before december. sorry 19 -1
po, Aug 21 2009
  

       OK, i'll alter it.
Edit: Done.
nineteenthly, Aug 21 2009
  

       //christmas// *Christmas   

       Brings a whole new meaning to Branch Circuits...
silverstormer, Aug 21 2009
  

       HI SILVER!   

       +1, 19
po, Aug 22 2009
  

       I'm not sure I get it. Are you talking about a motherboard with expansion slots on both sides?
phoenix, Aug 22 2009
  

       Rubs eyes, sees po, then looks up...yay oh yay...sliverstormer!!!   

       The idea...yes, and with colored lights and an angel at the top at mistletoe time. (Hahahahaaaa).
blissmiss, Aug 22 2009
  

       OK, probably shouldn't've posted this before sodding off for a week. Therefore, i'm fully expecting this anno to be justifiably ignored.
I have in mind a socket sitting upon the motherboard which looks a little like a network or 'phone jack, into which a card with a male version of the same can be inserted, with an option of sticking the thing on the edge of the board for external access. Given a fir tree shape, there could be at least four lines per branch, eight lines per level and therefore a more compact arrangement which would be easier to insert.
nineteenthly, Aug 29 2009
  

       So it's flat? A picture would be helpful. Keep in mind that for some high speed circuitry, trace length is important.
csea, Aug 29 2009
  

       I like backplane designs: mine actually has a trunk to which 4 cards are connected, each of which may have some smaller cards attached so obvious [+] for "great minds..." (give or take card orientation).
FlyingToaster, Aug 29 2009
  

       I'll link to a picture once i can turf the offspring off the desktop. Yes, i'm conscious of the timing problem, but would this apply to all peripherals?
nineteenthly, Aug 29 2009
  

       only peripheral I can think of offhand that might be affected by buss length of that magnitude would be the graphics card on high-powered gaming or rendering machines.
FlyingToaster, Aug 29 2009
  

       Wow, your kid has been on the computer for a long time.   

       It sounds like this would be far more expensive than the current edge connectors, but I await a picture of some sort.   

       Timing constraints necessitating carefully controlled trace lengths apply to any peripheral using a bus that has such requirements (e.g. PCIe), regardless of whether that device personally needs to transfer data at such a high rate.
notexactly, Aug 30 2019
  
      
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