User Guide • PC3-ALLEGRO • CompactPCI
®
PlusIO CPU Board • Intel® i7-3xxx Processor
Universal Serial Bus (USB)
The PC3-ALLEGRO is provided with twelve USB ports. All of them are USB 2.0 capable, but two ports,
routed to front panel connectors, are also supporting the USB 3.0 SuperSpeed standard.
The USB 2.0 interfaces are distributed to the front panel (two ports), two to the expansion board
interface connectors J-EXP, four to the high speed expansion connector J-HSE, and four ports are
available across the backplane connector J2.
The front panel USB connectors can source a minimum of 1.5A/5V each, over-current protected by
two electronic switches. Protection for the USB ports on the expansion interfaces and on the J2 PlusIO
connector is located on expansion boards. The USB xHCI and two EHCI controllers handling the USB
port operation at SuperSpeed, high-speed, full-speed and low-speed are integrated into the QM77
PCH.
Utility Interfaces
Besides the high speed mezzanine interface connectors J-HSE and J-PCIE, the PC3-ALLEGRO is
provided with the utility interface expansion connector socket J-EXP. This connector comprises several
interfaces, which may be useful for system expansion on mezzanine cards, as an option:
<
HD Audio
<
LPC (Low Pin Count)
<
SMBus
<
2 x USB
The SMBus is controlled by the QM77 platform controller hub. The SMBus signal lines on the J-EXP
utility expansion connector can be switched on/off under software control (PCH GPIO) in order to
isolate external components in case of an I
2
C address conflict.
The HD Audio port requires an additional audio codec, as provided e.g. on the PCS-BALLET side card.
The LPC bus presents an easy way to add legacy interfaces to the system. EKF offers a variety of
mezzanine expansion boards (side cards), to be attached on top of the PC3-ALLEGRO, featuring all
classic Super-I/O functionality, for example the PCS-BALLET or the CCO-CONCERT. Access to the
connectors PS/2 (mouse, keyboard), COM, USB and audio in/out is given directly from the front panel.
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