EKF C40-SCFA Compact Flash Mezzanine Module

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).