Specifications
2.1 INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER
2
HARDWARE
CONFIGURATION
This chapter describes what
is
required to integrate
the
Little Board/PC with a wide variety
of external devices, including keyboards, printers, modems, floppy and hard disk drives, and
monitors. Information is provided regarding the board's connector signals
and
pinouts,
external device requirements, interconnection cable wiring, and board configuration.
Also covered in
this
chapter
is
the configuration and initialization requirements of standard
and optional onboard devices. These include
both
the standard items such as the
DRAM
memory, battery-backed real time clock, and CPU speed control functions, as well as several
optional additions such as
EPROM and NOVRAM Solid State Disk drives, and a variety of
onboard expansion modules including the Ampro MiniModule video controllers.
It
is important to note, however, that many of the board's functions are software rather than
'"
hardware controlled. Therefore, many of the features and functions fescribed in
this
manual
assume the presence
of
the board's standard ROM-BIOS for their operation.
Refer
to
Chapter 3 for typical software configuration information, and to Chapters 4 and
S'
for techni-
cal details regarding the board's hardware and software functions.
2.1.1
Interface Connectors
Figure
2-1
shows the board's interface connectors (11-110). Table
2-1
summarizes the board's
connectors interface assignments. Connector pinouts and signal definitions are provided in
the sections of this chapter that cover each connector interface.
All of the board's
peripheralI/O
interface connectors (J2-J8) are dual row male
header
connectors,
of
varying sizes.
Each
of
these headers can
be
mated with either flat ribbon
(IDC) or discretely wired connectors. J2,
13, J4, J5,
and
J6 have been placed together at one
end of the board so that a single 64-position header plug can mate with the entire group.
In
some applications it
is
preferable to plug a specialized PC board assembly onto several or
all
of
the
I/O
connectors (J2-J8). This allows you to eliminate cables,
meet
packaging re-
quirements, add
EMI
ftltering, or
in
other
ways customize the installation
of
the Little
Board/PC
in
your application.
In
addition, one dual-row male
header
provides
the
PC
expansion bus for onboard MiniModule expansion.
2-1