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ABIT KR7A-RAID motherboard
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| Wed Dec 12, 2001 | 12:28A| PermaLink |
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"The HPT 372 controller is close to a chip that has a sticker on whit AC2001 marking on it and which is the biggest mystery of the KR7A-RAID model. After numerous tries to find on the internet what this chip’s function is, I failed. ABIT took care of things being even more intriguing, because when I removed the green sticker, in order to determine the manufacturer of the chips and the model’s number, I discovered that the markings have been simply scratched out and removed (take a look at the previous pictures). The user’s manual had nothing to say about AC2001 chip. After a couple of hours spent on the internet and going through ABIT’s product catalogues I determined that this chip is usually used in models that posses the “debug” LED system for early detection of problems during system boot. As usual, ABIT’s technical support remained unfriendly and denied me even the slightest formal answer to my e-mail. At the end I managed to find out that it is a XILINX XC95144XL programmable logic device that is primarily used in measurement-diagnostics devices, which confirmed my assumption that it is used as support for “debug LED” diagnostics system. To make things even more complicated – there is no debug LED section on KR7A-RAID model! The theory expanded by one of our forum members and a writer of a couple of editorials here on Bench House – silverglider. He stated that this chip is a completely programmable logic circuit (its ram is eeprom in nature) with 144 macros and a single flip-flop. The “144 macros” means that it can store 144 bits, for example, 16 for address and the rest of 128 bits for logic. It is usually used as address-decoder and that is why it is probable that it is used as controller support. It remains unclear why it is there. Is it one of ABIT’s omissions that will affect user’s wallets unnecessarily even more (the price of this chip when bought separately is around 28$!!)? It would certainly be nice to see ABIT inform us about the function of this “mystery” chip. Let me tell you, I came across so many “explanations” that it was almost funny – from those that stated that it is a special chip used for supporting the RAID controller to those that stated that it is AC’97 CODEC chip :)))"
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FULL STORY @
BENCH-HOUSE
(http://www.bench-house.com/motherboard/abit/kr7a-raid/kr7a-raid_001.html)
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Time stamped:
8:17PM, 05.19.2013
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