Kontron DIMM-PC/520I

Introduction

The DIMM-PC/520-I is an extremely compact PC module to be plugged on to customised base boards. The new DIMM-PC/520-I , based on AMD™ Elan SC520 133 MHz, features high performance with a integrated floating point unit, up to 32 MByte DRAM and 32 MByte IDE compatible Flash. Due to the extreme low power design no active cooling is required. The integrated high functionality of a x86 CPU Module comes along with all common PC interfaces (2 serial TTL, Printer, Keyboard, Floppy). There are versions available with optional USB or 10/100MBit Ethernet. The DIMM-PC ® is widely used where stable performance is required but space and power consumption is limited. Due to the extreme compact size (40 x 67 x 6 mm), the low power consumption and the integrated floating point unit the DIMM-PC/520-I is very suitable for GPS applications.

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ISA Compatible Standard

The pinout of the DIMM-Bus connector correspond to the pinout of the ISA bus connector. Therefore the two PC systems with different form factor are electrically compatible. Only the Latchable address-bus LA[17..23] and the signals of DMA 1,3,4 and 6 are not connected to the DIMM-PC-Bus. The 80386SX-solution is realised with a highly integrated CPU-chip of Acer Labs Inc. The DIMM modules are especially equipped for embedded applications with industrial BIOS extensions like setup date in EEPROM as a host mode-function, allowing the operation with an external PC as terminal. Following functions are onboard: Corelogic ALI M6117 with integrated microprocessor 80386SX-40MHz, RAM, keyboard, real time clock, IDE, Floppy, COM1, COM2, LPT.

Bootup Without Battery

All settings of the BIOS are stored additionally in a non-volatile EEPROM when "SAVE CMOS DATA" is done. No battery is required to store IDE parameters or other settings. Only if the date and time information is needed, a battery must be connected to the system.

IDE Hard Disk Interface

DIMM-PC/520-I provides a high capacity solid state flash memory that is electrically compatible with an IDE disk drive. The flashdisk on DIMM-PC/520-I provides upto 32 MByte of formatted storage capacity. The Flash Chipset (FCS) consists of two chips: a highly integrated flash controller and one memory module. The controller provides a true IDE compatible interface to the DIMM-PC/520-I. The controller manages interfacing to the host system, data storage and retrieval as well as ECC, defect handling and diagnostics and power management. The controller manages all defects and errors and makes the flash memory appear as perfect memory to the DIMM-PC/520-I. Once the flashdisk has been configured, it appears as a standard IDE disk drive.

DIMM-PC-Bus

The DIMM-PC-Bus is realised as a 144 pin PCB-board connector. The interconnection of a DIMM-PC board will be achieved through plug-in of the board to the DIMM-Connector on the peripheral application.

BIOS / Flash support

The licence of a standard AMI-BIOS is implemented in the Flash-EPROM. 16MB Flash is placed onboard. The 64KByte system-BIOS (CPU) and 64KByte extension-BIOS (Silicon disk) is located in the first MByte flash. The rest of the flash-memory can be used as a MS-DOS hard disk with boot capability. All access control is done through the IDE controller as the flash disk is detected as an IDE compatible disk with cylinders, heads and sectors. Due to this, any operating system can be used (disk space permitting of course).

Setup

No special HW-jumper is necessary. After power on over a menu driven setup the special function are adjustable. During boot up over the key "DEL" the jump to the CPU setup menu is possible.