Chapter 2 – System Board 2-1
Chapter 2 System Board
2.1 Features
The Altos 1100E system board is a dual-processor system board built on an ATX
baseboard using up to two Intel Pentium
III processors. It is integrated with the
Intel 440BX system controller, which consists of the PCI/AGP controller and the
PCI/ISA IDE accelerator (PIIX4).
The PCI/AGP controller host bus interface supports Pentium III processors with
100 MHz bus frequency. It also provides a 72-bit DRAM controller that supports
registered PC100 ECC synchronous DRAM DIMMs. The PCI/AGP controller
introduces a new technology, which is the Accelerated Graphics Port (AGP)
interface. Supporting up to 133 MHz data transfer rate, the AGP interface boosts
graphics performance.
The PIIX4 is a multifunctional PCI device controller implementing system
functions including PCI IDE, and universal serial bus (USB) host/hub. It also
supports Ultra DMA/33 synchronous DMA-compatible devices.
The four DIMM sockets on board allow memory upgrade to a maximum of 1024
MB and supports 72-bit DRAM using registered PC100 ECC synchronous DIMMs.
The system board also provides two USB (Universal Serial Bus) connectors, and
other standard features such as two UART NS16C550 serial ports, one enhanced
parallel port with Enhanced Parallel Port (EPP)/Extended Capabilities Port (ECP)
feature, a diskette drive interface, and two embedded Enhanced IDE interfaces.