Available as a mezzanine add-on expansion
board to the CCM-BOOGIE and successor CPU
carrier cards, the main purpose of the
C40-SCFA is to provide a CompactFlash pin
header suitable for attachment of all popular CF
storage cards, as a rugged and proven mass
storage media, which can be easy replaced.
Basically, the C40-SCFA is designed to fit into
the 4HP (20.32mm) envelope of a CPCI CPU
carrier board, so that another 4HP pitch
mezzanine expansion board can be stacked
above the CPU/C40 assembly in addition.
Further more, the C40-SCFA can be optionally
equipped with up to 2 USB Silicon State Drive
(SSD) modules 1), or up to 2 USB type A host
receptacles 1).
In addition, two SATA connectors (latching
headers) are optionally available on the
C40-SCFA 1), for attachment of system internal
drives by ordinary SATA cable harnesses. The
SATA channels may be either operated in a low
level RAID (0/1) mode, or as universal non-RAID
SATA ports
The CompactFlash facility requires emulation of
the legacy PATA/IDE interface (wich is no longer
available within the latest generation of Intel's
ICH southbridge) via the C40-SCFA on-board
SATA to PATA bridge chip. This solution does
not need any proprietary software drivers, since
the bridge is connected to one of the ICH SATA
channels and fully transparent to the BIOS and
operating system. Industrial grade CF cards are
widely available, with a capacity of up to 16GB
as of now. Installation of an operating system
on the CF card and system boot is
straightforward for ruggedized systems. The CF
card can be fastened by means of a screw
locked retainer, for optimum reliability.
Low profile USB SSD modules (2.00mm
connector pitch), as offered e.g. from Intel,
STEC, Sandisk and others have become also very
popular in embedded systems, with a capacity
of up to 8GB as of current. One or two modules
1) can be optionally mounted on the C40-SCFA,
either in addition to the CF card, or as alternate
mass storage.
Some of the population options mentioned may exceed the 4HP total stack height for the CPU
carrier board and C40-SCFA assembly. Please read carefully the respective notes (subchapters 'P-UFD1
P-UFD2', 'J-USB3 J-USB4', and 'P-SATA2 P-SATA3'. For some EKF expansion boards slight violations of
the 4HP envelope may be tolerable. Furthermore, some of the C40 stuffing options are exclusive to
each other, due to space restrictions on the C40-SCFA (see table below).
