Hardware Design 2-1
Chapter 2
Hardware design
2-1 Motherboard Layout
The P55-TH
is designed with Intel 82430HX PCIset chipset which is developed
by INTEL Corporation to fully support Intel Pentium processor PCI/ISA system.
The Intel 82430HX PCIset chipset prpovides increased integration and improved
performance designs. The 82430HX 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 SMC (STANDARD MICROSYSTEMS CORPORA-
TION) FDC37C669 Super I/O controller provides the standard PC I/O function:
floppy interface (up to 2.88 MB), two 16 Byte FIFO serial ports and EPP/ECP
capable parallel port. The
P55-TH
layout is shown in previous page (left page) for
user's reference.
Care must be taken
when inserting memory modules, inserting
Intel
P54C/P54CT/P54CST
processor, or even plugging PCI card into associated
slots to avoid damaging any circuits or sockets on board. A cooling fan is strongly
recommended when installing P54C/P54CT/P54CST processor due to possible
overheat.
The P55-TH
supports minimum of 8MB of System Memory and maximum of
512MB while L2 Cache can be 256KB/512KB synchronous SRAM Onboard with
the
COASt 2.0 or later Version
"
C
ache-
O
n-
A
-
ST
ick" solution to increase system
performance.( refer to
Page 2-5 Cache Memory Configuration
for the details.)
The P55-TH
support standard Fast Page or EDO (Extended Data Out or Hyper
Page Mode) DRAM. The EDO DRAM is designed to improve the DRAM read
performance (When L2 Cache is installed).
The P55-TH
provides four 72-pins
SIMM sites for memory expansion. The socket support 1M x 32(4MB), 2M x
32(8MB), 4M x 32(16MB), 8M x 32(32MB) and 16MB x 32(64MB) single-sided
or double-sided SIMM modules. The memory timing requires 70 nS Fast page
devices or 60 nS EDO DRAM. Memory parity generation and checking or ECC
(Error Checking and Correction) are supported. (DRAM Modules may be parity[x
72] or non-parity[x 64] or ECC[x72]. The BIOS will automaticlly detct which
DRAM has installed in SIMM sites.
The P55-TH
supports
Onboard two PCI IDE
connectors, and detects IDE
harddisk type by BIOS utility automatic.
The P55-TH
supports Award Plug & Play BIOS for the ISA and PCI cards. The
BIOS can be located in Flash EPROM. The advantage of having Flash EPROM is
much easier to replace BIOS code if necessary.
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