Further information on the MicroA1 revealed
Date 4-Dec-2003 20:49:48
Topic: Hardware News
| While I and CodeSmith was speculating about how the future IO daughtercard for the MicroA1 would look like and where it would go, Alan Redhouse decided to step in to clear up the missconseptions and share his thoughts for the final spec of the board. Read more for Alan's message.
You can find Alan's post here.
Read a cut and paste below.
Quote:
| Of course I could be wrong but then again all that Alan said was that ther'd be a plugin daugher board for the extra IO, he never mentioned an extra slot. |
What I said is that we are evaluating the practicalities of putting the 'enhanced I/O' on a small daughter board. To make it absolutely clear that will be a new custom connector (probably like the ones used for laptop docking stations) near/over the graphics chip. The PCI slot will remain as is, but for using the MicroA1 in applications where low profile hardware is required the PCI slot will it not be used - any needed additional functionality - eg wifi - can be added on a custom daughter board. (This also keeps open the options for third party hardware developers like Jens Schoenfeld to make all sorts of interesting gizmos).
Where space is not a problem then the PCI slot can take a 3-PCI slot riser card instead.
As far as graphics is concerned a low cost, low power Radeon chip will be used, which of course IS connected to the AGP bus. One option we are looking at is whether it would be feasible to route the AGP signals to a similar custom connector, but unless the cost is trivial it is difficult to see where the benefit would come from in the MicroA1's main (embedded) markets.
We are also looking at the feasibility of putting 256MB on board (retaining the single SODIMM socket for expansion) to keep overall build costs down and largely immune to the large market swings in SDRAM DIMM prices.
More details at Bath.
Alan
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