Product Brief

AMD NetSC520 Demonstration Board

Note: The NetSC520 demonstration board will be available in Q1 2001.

The AMD NetSC520 Demonstration Board is a small demonstration board combining AMD's Élan™SC520 microcontroller with an AMD Am79C973 10/100 Ethernet controller, 16 Mbytes of synchronous DRAM (SDRAM), and 16 Mbytes of ExIP Flash memory. The board demonstrates a simple, low-cost Ethernet capability that can be added to a wide variety of embedded networking applications. This platform can help expedite the product development cycle of your web server, thin client and/or gateway design - PCI drivers and working TCP/IP stacks are shipped with the board and you can immediately start writing and porting code to this developed hardware platform.

Typical applications of the demonstration board design include low-cost, managed Ethernet hubs, "smart house" components, industrial control, point-of-sale terminals, and software development tools such as ROM emulators. An entire new class of applications known as "net appliances", ranging from electric utility meters to coffee pots, could also use a design similar to that of the NetSC520 demonstration board.

The NetSC520 demonstration board is based upon the ElanSC520 microcontroller. The microcontroller provides an industry-standard x86 architecture CPU, integrated with a 33-MHz, 32-bit PCI bus, 8- and 16-bit general-purpose (GP) bus, high-performance SDRAM controller, ROM/Flash controller, integrated peripherals, and a variety of other features including system test and debug functions.

The NetSC520 dmonstration board is designed with the PC/104-Plus expansion interface, which provides access to the ElanSC520 microcontroller's PCI bus and GP-bus expansion signals for more information about the expansion interface, see www.pc104.org.
The NetSC520 demonstration board provides the following features:

• ÉlanSC520 microcontroller 
• AMD PCnet-Fast III (Am79C973) single-chip 10/100 Mbit/s Ethernet controller  
• 16 Mbytes SDRAM
• 16 Mbytes ExIP Flash memory
• Two 1-Kbyte Serial EEPROM memories (one for Ethernet configuration, one for general use)
• PC/104-Plus expansion interface (embedded PCI and ISA-compatible interfaces)
• One RJ-45 connector for 10/100Base-T twisted-pair Ethernet connection
• Two RS-232 serial ports with DB-9 connectors
• One 2-mm-pitch IDE interface (for 2.5-inch hard disk drive)
• LEDs are provided to indicated power status and the activity of serial, Ethernet, and IDE interfaces. Additional software-controlled LEDs are provided via nine Programmable IO (PIO) signals
• Eight software-defined bootstrap configuration switches
• Three system-defined bootstrap configuration switches
• 12-V external power supply (AC wall adapter)
• Onboard power supplies for 2.5 V, 3.3 V, and 5 V
• Banana jacks provided for external supply of PC/104-Plus voltages not provided on-board: -12 V and -5 V
• Battery backup for the microcontroller's real-time clock (RTC)
• Reset circuitry with onboard reset button and header for external switch
• Port for JTAG and AMDebug™ technology debugging