Specifications
1–1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
1.1 GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Little Board/P5i is a high integration, high performance Pentium-based PC/AT compatible system in the
footprint of a 5 1/4 inch disk drive. This rugged and high quality single-board system contains all the
component subsystems of a PC/AT PCI motherboard plus the equivalent of six expansion boards. The Little
Board/P5i is designed to meet the size, power consumption, temperature range, quality, and reliability
demands of embedded applications.
Key functions included on the Little Board/P5i are a high-speed Pentium CPU, 64-bit wide RAM, 256K
synchronous cache, embedded-PC BIOS in Flash EPROM, keyboard and speaker interfaces, four buffered
serial ports, a multimode IEEE-1284 enhanced parallel port, floppy controller, PCI bus quad EIDE drive
controller, a flat panel/CRT display controller, an UltraSCSI controller (with built-in Adaptec SCSI BIOS),
and an Ethernet 10BaseT LAN interface.
In addition, the Little Board/P5i includes a comprehensive set of extensions and enhancements that are
specifically designed for embedded systems. Among the many embedded-PC enhancements that ensure fail-
safe embedded system operation are a watchdog timer, a powerfail NMI generator, serial console and
program download support, and an onboard bootable "solid state disk" (SSD) capability.
System operation requires a single +5 Volt power source (and 3.3 Volts for PCI expansion cards if required)
and offers "green PC" power-saving modes under support of Advanced Power Management (APM) BIOS
functions.
1.2 FEATURES
CPU/Motherboard
The Little Board/P5i has a fully PC-compatible motherboard architecture, with a Pentium low-voltage CPU.
Several CPU speeds are available: 100 MHz, 133 MHz, and 166 MHz. (As processor speeds increase, new
versions may be offered. Contact your Ampro sales representative for current models.)
The Pentium CPU has a 16K byte on-chip cache memory. In addition, a 256K byte synchronous secondary
cache is provided for increased performance.
The board uses standard 72-pin Single In-line Memory Modules (SIMM™), and supports memory from 8M
bytes to 128M bytes in a 64-bit configuration. (Two SIMMs are required.) Both single- and double-sided
SIMMs are supported. Either standard fast page-mode or EDO RAMs can be used. For parity support, use
fast page-mode DRAMs.
It has a full complement of standard PC/AT architectural features, including DMA channels, interrupt
controllers, real-time clock, and timer counters.
Enhanced Embedded-PC BIOS
One of the most valuable features of the Little Board/P5i is its enhanced embedded-PC BIOS, which includes
an extensive set of functions that meet the unique requirements of embedded system applications. These
enhancements include: