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7
Important Technology Information
The following technological information is designed to give the reader a better understanding of some of
features of the ETX®-CN8. This information can be referenced when reading the
B IOS Operation
sections that follow. There are also references to additional documentation that will
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help to develop a better understanding of the technical information described herein.
7.1
I/O APIC vs 8259 PIC Interrupt mode
The I/O APIC (Advanced Programmable Interrupt Controller) handles interrupts differently then the
8259 PIC. The following information explains these differences.
7.1.1
Method of interrupts transmission
The I/O APIC transmits interrupts through the system bus and interrupts are handled without the needs
for the processor to run an interrupt acknowledge cycle.
7.1.2
Interrupt priority
The priority of interrupts in the I/O APIC is independent of the interrupt number.
7.1.3
More interrupts
The I/O APIC in the chipset of the ETX®-CN8 supports a total of 24 interrupts.
The APIC is not supported by all operating systems. The APIC mode must be enabled in the BIOS setup
before the OS installation. APIC only works in ACPI mode.
Note:
Enable the APIC mode if your OS supports it.
7.2
Thermal Monitor and Catastrophic Thermal Protection
The Thermal Monitor within the VIA® processor helps to control the processor temperature.
7.3
ACPI Suspend Modes and Resume Events
The ETX®-CN8, supports the S1 (POS=Power On Suspend) state and S3 state (=Save to Ram). S4 (=Save
to Disk) is not supported by the BIOS (S4_BIOS) but it is supported by the following operating systems:
WinME
®
Win2k
®
WinXP
®
Vista
®
The following events resume the system from S1:
Power Button
®
PS/2 Keyboard and Mouse IRQs (1 & 12)
®
Kontron User's Guide ETX®-CN8
7 Important Technology Information
43
S ystem Resources
and
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