Hardware Design; Mainboard Layout - EPOX P55-VP 2 User Manual

Hardware Design

2-1
Chapter 2
Hardware design

2-1 Mainboard Layout

The P55-VP 2
is designed with VIA Apollo VPX PCIset chipset which is devel-
R
oped by VIA Corporation to fully support Pentium Processor PCI/ISA system. The
VIA Apollo VPX PCIset chipset can increase integration and improve performance
designs. The chipset provides an integrated IDE controller with two high perfor-
mance IDE interfaces for up to four IDE devices (hard devices, CD-ROM device, etc).
The Winbond W83877F Super I/O controller provides the standard PC I/O function:
floppy interface, two 16 Byte FIFO serial ports and EPP/ECP capable parallel port.
The P55-VP 2 layout is shown in the previous page for user's reference. Care must
be taken when inserting memory modules, inserting CPU or even plugging PCI card
into associated slots to avoid damaging any circuits or sockets on board. A cooling
fan is strongly recommended when installing P54C/P54CTB/P55C/K5/K6/6x86/6x86L/
M2 processor due to possible overheat.
The P55-VP 2
supports a minimum of 4MB and a maximum of 192MB of System
Memory while L2 Cache can be 256KB/512KB synchronous SRAM Onboard to
increase system performance. (Refer to Page 2-6 Cache Memory Configuration for
the details.)
The P55-VP 2
supports standard Fast Page, EDO (Extended Data Out or Hyper
The P55-VP 2
Page Mode) or synchronous DRAM. provides four 72-pin SIMM
and one 168-pin DIMM sites for memory expansion. The sockets support 1M x
32(4MB), 2M x 32(8MB), 4M x 32(16MB), and 8M x 32(32MB) single-sided or double-
sided memory modules. The memory timing requires 70 ns Fast page devices or 60
ns EDO DRAM. (DRAM Modules may be parity [x 36] or non-parity [x 32].
The P55-VP 2 supports two Onboard PCI IDE connectors, and automatically detects
IDE harddisk type by BIOS utility automatic.
The P55-VP 2 supports Award Plug & Play BIOS for the ISA and PCI cards. The
BIOS can be located in Flash EPROM which can replace BIOS code easily if neces-
sary.