The present invention provides for systems and apparatus that support non-hotswappable (non-HA) 64-bit Compact Peripheral Component Interconnect (CPCI) cards so that customers can use their old legacy (non-hotswappable) cards in the node or input/output (I/O) slots of a hotswappable CPCI system. The system controller card in the CPCI system is responsible for configuring the entire CPCI interface including the width of the CPCI interface (i.e., 32-bit or 64-bit). In one embodiment of the present invention, all the radial HA control signals (e.g., BD_—SEL#, HEALTHY#, PCI_—RST#) to all of the CPCI slots are implemented separately on some other card (or board), such as a system management card (e.g., an alarm card). At the time of system powerup, only the system management card (SMC) powers up and checks the HEALTHY# register where it maintains the healthy status of all the cards in the system. The non-hotswappable card (or board) will assert the HEALTHY# signal to the SMC. Because the HEALTHY# pin is grounded in the non-hotswappable card (or board), the present embodiment uses this grounding as a way to determine whether any non-hotswappabe card is present in the system. If a non-hotswappable card is determined to be present in the system, the SMC will deassert the radial PCI reset (PCI_—RST#) to the particular slot where the non-hotswappable card is present and initiate the power ON sequence to the system controller card. The system controller card (e.g., the host card) will generate the global reset and the REQ64# assertion at the time of power up (the REQ64# is asserted at the time when the global reset is de-asserted), which will configure the non-hotswappable card correctly (64-bit or 32-bit).