Technical information

Hardware Design 2-1
Chapter 2
Hardware design
2-1 Overview
The EP-5ATXA-M is designed with Intel 82430TX PCIset chipset which is
developed by Intel Corporation to fully support Pentium Processor PCI/ISA system.
The Intel 82430TX PCIset chipset can increase integration and improve performance
designs. The chipset provides an integrated IDE controller with two high performance
IDE interfaces for up to four IDE devices (hard devices, CD-ROM device, etc). The
PnP Super I/O controller provides the standard PC I/O functions: a floppy interface,
two 16-byte FIFO serial ports and an EPP/ECP capable parallel port. The EP-5ATXA-
M layout is shown in the previous page for user's reference. Care must be taken
when inserting memory modules, inserting CPU or even plugging PCI card into the
associated slots to avoid damaging any circuits or sockets on board. A cooling fan is
strongly recommended when installing P54C/P54CTB/P55C (MMX)/K5/K6/6x86
(6x86L)/6x86MX processor due to possible overheat. The EP-5ATXA-M supports
CPU temperature monitor and alarm to prevent CPU's cooling fan from malfunction or
CPUoverheat. There is a heat sensor to monitor CPU temperature. If CPU overheats,
then speaker will alarm and CPU will slow down to save your data and shutdown the
system.
The EP-5ATXA-M supports a minimum of 8MB of system memory and a
maximum of 256MB with 512KB synchronous SRAM onboard to increase system
performance.
The EP-5ATXA-M supports standard Fast Page, EDO (Extended Data Out or
Hyper Page Mode) or synchronous DRAM. The EP-5ATXA-M provides two 72-
pin SIMM and three 168-pin DIMM sites for memory expansion. Each socket sup-
ports 1M x 32 (4MB), 2M x 32 (8MB), 4M x 32 (16MB), and 8M x 32 (32MB) single-
sided or double-sided memory modules. The memory timing requires 70 ns for Fast
Page devices or 60 ns for EDO DRAM. This mainboard has three 168-pin DIMM sites
to support 3.3V (power level) Unbuffered Synchronous DRAMs(SDRAM) and two
72-pin SIMM sites to support 5.0V (power level) Fast Page and EDO DRAM. Memory
parity generation and checking are not supported. (DRAM Modules may be parity[x
36] or non-parity[x 32].
The EP-5ATXA-M supports two Onboard PCI IDE connectors that can support PIO
Mode/Ultra DMA 33 device and automatically detect IDE harddisk type by BIOS
utility.
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