Specifications

Little Board/P5i Technical Manual
1–2
 Solid State Disk (SSD) support. Uses solid state memory in place of a rotating media drive (see
below).
 Watchdog timer. Monitors boot process; provides function call for applications
 Fast boot operation. Normal or accelerated POST
 Fail-safe boot support. Intelligently retries boot devices until successful
 Battery-free boot support. Saves system SETUP information in non-volatile EEPROM
 Serial console option. Lets you use a serial device as console
 Serial loader option. Supports loading boot code from an external serial source
 EEPROM access function. 512 bits of EEPROM storage available to user; useful for serialization,
copy protection, security, etc.
 OEM customization hooks. Can execute custom code prior to system boot via ROM extensions;
allows sophisticated system customization without BIOS modification
The ROM BIOS is stored in a Flash EPROM device for maintainability. 12V Flash programming power
is generated on the board from the 5V supply. The standard ROM BIOS Flash device is 256K bytes, but a
1M byte device is available by special order. The additional Flash memory is available for OEM use.
Modular PC/104-Plus Expansion Bus
The Little Board/P5i provides a PC/104-Plus expansion bus for additional system functions. This bus
offers compact, self-stacking, modular expandability. The PC/104-Plus expansion bus is an extension of
the PC/104 bus. The PC/104 bus is defined in the IEEE P996.1 Standard for Compact Embedded PC
Modules. It is an embedded system version of the signal set provided on a desktop PC's ISA bus. The
PC/104-Plus bus adds a 120-pin PCI bus connector.
To contact the PC/104 Consortium for a copy of the proposed PC/104-Plus specification:
PC/104 Consortium
849 Independence Avenue, Suite B
Mountain View, CA 94043
Telephone: [phone]
FAX: [phone]
The growing list of PC/104 modules available from Ampro and hundreds of other PC/104 vendors
includes such functions as communications interfaces, video framegrabbers, field bus interfaces, digital
signal processors (DSPs), data acquisition and control functions, and many specialized interfaces and
controllers. In addition, custom application-specific logic boards can also be stacked directly on top of
the Little Board/P5i using its PC/104 expansion bus interface as a rugged and reliable interconnect.
On the Little Board/P5i module, the PCI bus is used for its onboard SCSI, EIDE, and video interfaces,
and for add-on peripherals. You can attach PCI peripherals to the board’s stackable PCI bus expansion
connector in much the same way PC/104 modules are stacked on the PC/104 connectors. The PCI
expansion connector consists of 4 rows of 30 pins (120 pin header), and carries all of the appropriate PCI
signals to accommodate up to 4 PCI add-on modules. The bus operates at clock speeds up to 33 MHz.
Byte-Wide Socket, OEM Flash device, and Solid State Disk (SSD)
Important features of the Little Board/P5i are its byte-wide memory socket and OEM Flash device. Both
can provide memory in which you can install a bootable "solid state disk" (SSD). The SSD substitutes
EPROMs, Flash EPROMs, or battery-backed SRAMs for conventional rotating-media drives. Using