NEC PowerMate CT manual Plug and Play, PCI/IDE Ports, Parallel Interface

The FLASH ROM allows the system and video BIOS to be upgraded with the BIOS Update Utility, without having to physically remove the ROM (see Section 2 for further information on the BIOS Update Utility). The FLASH ROM supports the reprogramming of the system BIOS and the video BIOS.

System Memory

The system comes with between 64 MB and 512 MB of RDRAM installed in two RIMM sockets on the system board.

The RIMM sockets accept 184-pin, 64-, 128-, and 256-MB RIMMs. See the “Sample RIMM Memory Upgrade Paths” earlier in this section for a list of supported RIMMs.

Plug and Play

The system comes with a plug and play BIOS in support of plug and play technology. Plug and play simplifies setup procedures for installing plug and play expansion boards. With plug and play, adding a plug and play expansion board is done by turning off the system, installing the board, and turning on the system. There are no jumpers to set and no system resource conflicts to resolve. Plug and play automatically configures the board. (Some plug and play devices might need to be jumpered if used in a system running the Windows NT operating system.

PCI/IDE Ports

The system board has two high-performance PCI/IDE ports: a primary port and a secondary port. The primary PCI/IDE port has an enhanced IDE interface that supports PIO Mode 4 devices with 66 MB per second maximum burst rate data transfers on the high-performance Ultra DMA bus. The primary port supports Ultra DMA/66.

The installed hard drive is connected as a master device on the primary PCI/IDE port. The installed CD-ROM drive or DVD-ROM drive is connected to the secondary PCI/IDE port as a master device. The hard drive is connected to the primary port with a three-connector Ultra DMA/66 40-pin, 80-conductor cable. The CD-ROM or DVD-ROM is connected to the secondary port with a standard three-connector IDE cable.

Parallel Interface

The system has a 25-pin bidirectional parallel port on the system board. Port specifications conform to the IBM-PC standards. The port supports Enhanced Capabilities Port (ECP) and Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP) modes for devices that require ECP or EPP protocols. The protocols allow high-speed bi-directional transfer over a parallel port and increase parallel port functionality by supporting more devices.

The BIOS has automatic ISA printer port sensing that works with most devices. If the BIOS detects an ISA printer port mapped to the same address, the built-in printer port is disabled. (Verify in the BIOS Setup that printer ports mapped to the same address are enabled or disabled appropriately.) The BIOS also sets the first parallel interface port it finds as LPT1 and the second port it finds as LPT2. The interrupt is set at IRQ7 via the BIOS Setup Utility. Software- selectable base addresses are 378h, 278h, and 3BCh.

Sets of I/O addresses for the parallel port are given in the following table (see Section 2, “System Configuration,” for interrupt levels). This is a list of all possible configurations; the parallel port uses only one set.

4-10 System Board