Embedded Motherboard for Industrial I/O Uses ETX and PC/104 Modules

ACCES I/O Products (San Diego, CA) has released the NANO I/O Server, an embedded motherboard system designed to support the company’s line of USB and PC/104 I/O modules, along with the performance of ETX.

The server features a motherboard/baseboard measuring 120 × 125 mm, and right-angle mounted connectors including VGA, RS- 232, four rear-mounted USB 2.0 ports, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, and 10/100 Ethernet LAN. The server can utilize any embedded ETX CPU board that meets the ETX processing standard and provides PC/104 I/O module expansion. It can provide system solutions from a 1.8-GHz Pentium M, a fanless midrange 600-MHz Celeron M, or a very low power 100-MHz processor. The board supports PC/104-Plus I/O modules in an upward stack, and has supplemental onboard I/O connectors for flat-panel support, IDE, CompactFlash, and an extra RS-232/422/485-selectable serial port. Power is provided by a 12-pin micro-fit power connector with a cable adapter connected to any ATX power supply. For an external DC-powered system, a PC/104 DC-DC power supply can be plugged into the PC/104 I/O connector. The server offers a family of systems based on COTS ETX CPU modules and the company’s ETX-NANO-104 embedded baseboard, which can be mounted into various custom chassis. Using PC/104 I/O modules stacked in the system, the NANO can function as a complete, self-contained data acquisition system. It also can act as a standalone computer or a small USB I/O server for external data acquisition and control products. For pure embedded applications, the server can be mounted inside OEM equipment for PC-based monitoring and control.