GE VMIVME-7696 Pentium II processor based on VMEbus single board computer

GE VMIVME-7696 Pentium II processor based on VMEbus single board computer

Basic Product Information

Product type: VMIVME-7696 is a single board computer (SBC) based on the Pentium II processor, using 6U dual Eurocard format and occupying two slots. Please note that this product is not recommended for new designs, specifications have not been maintained, some options may be unavailable, and some information may be outdated.

Application areas: Suitable for simulation, instrumentation, industrial control, process control and monitoring, factory automation, intelligent networked PLC controllers, automatic testing, data acquisition, and other fields.

Core configuration and performance

Microprocessor: using Intel Pentium II processor (with MMX technology), with a speed of 333 MHz or 450 MHz, 32-bit addressing capability and 64 bit data bus, superscalar architecture allows for the execution of 3 instructions per clock cycle, with dynamic branch prediction unit, independent instruction and data cache, and built-in 512 KB level 2 cache (using dual independent bus architecture).

Memory configuration: Supports up to 512 MB of memory through a 144 pin SODIMM SDRAM module (only -6xx option supports 512 MB), with onboard DRAM and VMEbus dual port connection; Optional 8-96 MB flash memory (accessed through the secondary IDE port, BIOS supports booting from flash memory); Provide 128 KB battery backup SRAM, data can be retained during power failure, and can be accessed in PCI memory space.

Display function: Equipped with a 64 bit AGP SVGA controller, with 4 MB synchronous DRAM (64 bit high bandwidth data interface), supporting multiple screen resolutions, color counts, and refresh rates, such as 256 to 16 million colors at 640 x 480 resolution, refresh rates of 60-85 Hz, etc.

Interfaces and extensions

SCSI Controller: Onboard Adaptec 7880 PCI SCSI-2 controller, supporting 8-bit or 16 bit operations, with a speed of up to 40 Mbyte/s, providing SCSI I/O through VMEbus P2 connector, requiring the use of VMIAC-0561 SCSI adapter card.

Network interface: onboard DEC 21143 PCI Ethernet controller, supporting 10BaseT and 100BaseTX, accessed through RJ45 connector, using BootWare from Lanworks Technologies ®  Supports remote Ethernet boot and multiple protocols.

USB interface: The front panel has a Universal Serial Bus (USB) connection to the hub host controller, supporting functions such as isochronous data transfer and asynchronous message passing.

Serial and parallel ports: Two 16550 compatible serial ports, each with a 16 byte FIFO, supporting a maximum baud rate of 56 kHz; An enhanced parallel port that complies with the IEEE-1284 standard, with a 16 byte FIFO, and a data rate of up to 2 Mbyte/s in ECP mode.

Other ports: Standard PS/2 keyboard and mouse connectors, as well as small speakers for PC/AT sound output.

PMC Expansion: Supports IEEE P1386 universal mezzanine card specification, with 5V PCI mezzanine card expansion sites, supporting various commercial PMC modules such as fiber channel, reflective memory, analog and digital I/O.

VMEbus related functions

Interface features: Based on Newbridge/Mundra, Universe II high-performance PCI-to-VME interface supports VME64 mode, including A32/A24/D32/D16/D08 (EO)/MBLT64/BLT32, etc.

System Controller: Can be used as a slot 1 controller, supporting multiple arbitration modes (Round Robin, Single Level, Priority), providing SYSCLK driver, IACK * daisy chain driver, etc. The arbitration timeout can be programmed (16 or 256 µ s).

Requester and Interrupt: The microprocessor can request and obtain bus control through the VMEbus request line (BR3 to BR0), supporting multiple modes; The interrupt handler can monitor and respond to the VMEbus IRQ line, and the interrupt generator can issue interrupts through the VMEbus interrupt line (IRQ7 to IRQ1 *) under software control.

Byte order conversion: Built in real-time byte order conversion hardware (patent number 6032212), supports small and large data interfaces, and byte conversion for master-slave interfaces is controlled by software.

Master slave interface: The master interface provides 9 independent memory windows for mapping PCI transmission to VMEbus, and 8 independent memory windows for mapping VMEbus transmission to PCI bus from the slave interface. The window sizes have corresponding minimum and maximum values (0, 4 windows 4 Kbyte -4 Gbyte, etc.), and the slave interface windows can work in coupling or decoupling mode.

Enhanced bus error handling: It can read the VMEbus address that caused the bus error (in all modes), support bus cycle timeout and assert bus errors (regardless of whether it is a system controller), and can also be configured to assert interrupts after bus cycle timeout.

Featured Features

Timer and watchdog: Three 16/32-bit timers (compatible with 82C54) that can be mapped in PCI memory space and are fully programmable; Software programmable watchdog timer, timeout can be configured as reset through jumper, software can enable causing non shielded interrupt (NMI) or VMEbus SYSFAIL.

LED indicator lights and buttons: The front panel has 5 LEDs that display+5V power, VMEbus SYSFAIL status, IDE activity, etc; A small reset button that can reset the board, and if the system controller is enabled, it will also generate SYSRESET * on VMEbus.