Chapter 1
Introduction
General Description
The Little Board/P5x is a high integration, high-performance Pentium-based PC/AT-compatible system that conforms to the EBX V.1.1 specification. This rugged and high quality single-board system contains all the component subsystems of a PC/AT PCI motherboard plus the equivalent of up to six expansion boards. The Little Board/P5x is designed to meet the size, power consumption, temperature range, quality, and reliability demands of embedded system applications.
Key functions on the Little Board/P5x include:
!High-speed Pentium CPU
!64-bit wide 3.3V DRAM – up to 256M bytes
!512K synchronous secondary cache
!Embedded-PC BIOS in Flash EPROM
!Four buffered serial ports (with RS-232, RS-485, TTL options)
!Two universal serial bus (USB) ports
!Infrared (IrDA) port
!Multi-mode IEEE-1284 parallel port
!Floppy controller
!Dual PCI-bus EIDE/UltraDMA drive controllers
!Flat-panel/CRT display controller
!Adaptec UltraSCSI controller (Special Order)
!Built-in Adaptec SCSI BIOS
!Ethernet 100BaseT LAN interface,
!Compact Flash solid-state IDE drive support
!Standard PC keyboard and speaker interfaces
In addition, Ampro has made many improvements to the architecture and firmware of the traditional desktop PC to optimize it for embedded applications. Among the many embedded-PC enhancements that ensure fail-safe embedded system operation and application versatility are a watchdog timer, a powerfail NMI generator, serial console support, serial boot loader, batteryless boot, failsafe boot, accelerated boot, on-board high-density Compact Flash disk, and BIOS extensions for OEM boot customization.
System operation requires a single +5 Volt power source (and 3.3 Volts for low-voltage PCI expansion cards, if required) and offers "green PC" power-saving modes under support of Advanced Power Management (APM) BIOS functions.
Product Feature Summary
CPU/Motherboard
The Little Board/P5x has a fully PC-compatible motherboard architecture, with a Pentium low- voltage CPU. It supports all Socket 7 CPUs with up to 7.5A core current. As CPUs evolve, new versions may be offered. Contact your Ampro sales representative for current models.
For improved reliability in harsh thermal environments, the board implements a CPU thermal sensor and configurable thermal-management control logic in the BIOS.
