Advantech PCA-6179, User Manual

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2 PCA-6179 User's Manual
1.1 Introduction
The PCA-6179 Series all-in-one industrial grade CPU card uses Intel's
highly acclaimed Pentium
®
III processor, together with the VIA
Apollo Pro133A chipset. The card works with standard ISA or
PCI/ISA-bus passive backplanes.
The CPU provides 256 KB on-CPU L2 cache, eliminating the need
for external SRAM chips. It has two PCI EIDE interfaces (for up to
four devices) and a floppy disk drive interface (for up to two devices).
Other features include two RS-232 serial ports (16C550 UARTs with
16-byte FIFO or compatible), one enhanced parallel port (supports
EPP/ECP) and two USB (Universal Serial Bus) ports. The PCI
enhanced IDE controller supports Ultra DMA/33/66 and PIO Mode 4
operation. This provides data transfer rates of over 33/66 MB/sec.
System BIOS supports boot-up from an IDE CD-ROM, SCSI
CD-ROM and LS-120.
A backup of CMOS data is stored in the Flash memory, which
protects data even after a battery failure. Also included is a 63-level
watchdog timer, which resets the CPU or generates an interrupt if a
program cannot be executed normally. This enables reliable operation
in unattended environments.
The PCA-6179 Series offers several impressive industrial features
such as a VGA (AGP) controller, a PCI Ultra2 SCSI controller, a
10/100Base-T networking controller, three DIMM slots for a total of
1.5 GB RAM memory, and an ISA High Drive. In addition, the
PCA-6179 Series supports a solid state disk (SSD) using M-Systems
Corporation's DiskOnChip
®
2000 Flash disk, for up to 144 MB of
non-volatile, reliable memory that is not vulnerable to the hazards of
an industrial computing environment. All these make it an ideal
choice for applications that require both high performance and full
functionality.
Note: Some of the features mentioned above are not
available with all models. For more information
about the specifications of a particular model, see
Section 1.3: Specifications.