[geeks] (1) PCIe-ish slot? (2) PCI SATA? (3) eSATA?

[Mouse]

I have some questions for the assembled wisdom, if anyone might happen
to have answers and be willing to provide them.  They're all related to
the same situation, so I'll give a minimal description.

My backup scheme involves swapping out backup disks once a month.
Historically, I've been doing this by turning the relevant machine off.
But that machine appears to have finally failed.

The failed machine was doing two things: it was my main house router
and it was my offsite-backup-disk host.  I've found another machine and
loaded it up with enough Ethernets for it to take on the router
functionality.  This leads to question 1: that machine has a mystery
slot.  I thought it was PCIe at first, but it's about 1cm too close to
the back panel for a PCIe card I have to fit mechanically.  Anyone have
any guesses what it might be?  (The machine is old enough to have an
ISA slot; I was surprised to see what appeared to be PCIe on the same
board as ISA, but it seems it isn't actually PCIe.)

That machine also has no SATA.  (Not too surprising for a machine with
ISA.)  But the backup disks I have are all SATA.  So this leaves me
wanting a PCI SATA card.  I did a little searching but haven't found
anything but PCIe SATA, which as the previous paragraph implies won't
help.  But my Web skillz are rather poor.

Another option might be eSATA, but I also have been unable to find PCI
eSATA.  I also have found conflicting information about what eSATA
actually is; I thought it was just SATA run outside the case, with a
little electronics to support hot-plug.  Some things I've found seem to
agree, but some disagree.

So, anyone know of anyone who makes a PCI SATA card, or a PCI eSATA
card?

Also, can anyone explain what eSATA actually is?

/~\ The ASCII				  Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML		mouse at rodents-montreal.org
/ \ Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B