Hardware Design 2-1
2-1 Motherboard Layout
Chapter 2
Hardware design
The P55-IT
is designed with Intel Triton 82430FX PCIset chipset which is
developed by INTEL Corporation to fully support Intel Pentium PCI/ISA system.
The Intel "Triton" 82430FX PCIset chipset prpovides increased integration and
improved performance designs. The "Triton" 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
CORPORATION) FDC37C665GT 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-IT
layout is shown in previous page (left
page) for user's reference.
Care must be taken
when inserting memory modules,
inserting Intel
P54C/P55C/P55CT
processor, inserting
VRM
(
V
oltage
R
egulator
M
odule) or even plugging PCI card into associated slots to avoid damaging any
circuits or sockets on board. A cooling fan is strongly recommended when install-
ing P54C/P55C processor due to possible overheat.
The P55-IT
supports minimum of 8MB of System Memory and maximum of
128MB while L2 Cache can be 256KB/512KB synchronous (The
COAST
"
C
ache-
O
n-
A
-
ST
ick" solution ) or asynchronous SRAM to increase system performance.(
refer to
Page 2-5 Cache Memory Configuration
for the details.)
The P55-IT
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 asynchronous SRAM and not installed).
The
P55-IT
provides four 72-pins SIMM sites for memory expansion. The socket
support 1M x 32(4MB), 2M x 32(8MB), 4M x 32(16MB), and 8M x 32(32MB)
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
is not supported. (DRAM Modules may be parity[x 36] or non-parity[x 32].
The P55-IT
supports
Onboard two PCI IDE
connectors, and detects IDE
harddisk type by BIOS utility automatic.
The P55-IT
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.
