1-6 Technical Information
IDE Ports
The system board provides two fast IDE ports: primary channel and secondary channels.
Each port supports two devices for a total of four IDE devices. The system board allows
the connection of an IDE CD-ROM drive for system configuration flexibility without the
addition of a controller.
The IDE ports feature an enhanced IDE interface which supports up to 10 MB per second
32-bit wide data transfers on the high-performance PCI local bus. The standard hard disk
and Zip drive (in some systems) are connected to the primary channel. The CD-ROM drive
is attached to the secondary channel.
I/O Ports
The system board features an enhanced parallel port, two buffered high-speed serial ports,
and two Universal Serial Bus (USB) ports.
The enhanced parallel port supports Enhanced Capabilities Port (ECP) and Enhanced
Parallel Port (EPP) modes for devices that require ECP or EPP protocols. These protocols
allow high-speed bi-directional transfer over a parallel port and increase parallel port
functionality by supporting more devices.
The two buffered high-speed serial ports use a fast 16C550 UART which supports transfer
rates up to 115.2 kilobits (Kb) per second. These ports allow the installation of high-speed
serial devices for faster data transfer rates.
The two USB ports allow additional new plug and play serial devices without removing the
system cover. Simply plug the USB device into the port. The speed varies between
12 megabits per second (Mbps) for printers and 1.5 Mbps for mice and keyboards. Up to
127 USB devices can be connected to the computer.
The combination of the enhanced parallel port, buffered serial ports, and USB ports ensure
optimum performance for future peripheral devices and operating systems.
Sound System
The system board features the Crystal Semiconductor CS4236B audio codec and CS4611
PCI audio accelerator. The CS4236B integrates an internal FM music synthesizer and
joystick logic. The chip also provides the following features.
Advanced power management
Symmetrical mixer
Support for DirectSound
™
Full-duplex audio
Sound Blaster
®
, Sound Blaster Pro, and Windows Sound System
™
compatibility
