Mini-DDrive General Micro Systems Board

The General Micro Systems Mini-DDrive Module is a mass storage solution for the GMS VME Single Board Computer (SBC) family of boards. This storage module provides the user with the ability to add several different configurations of mass storage directly into the VME card cage without the typical mounting and cabling issues. The DDrive module occupies only one 6U slot in the VME card cage and requires only power from the VME Bus.

The DDrive module may be configured with one or two 2.5-inch IDE drives for high shock/vibration requirements, and one microfloppy. The microfloppy may be a standard 3.5 inch, 1.44 MB floppy utilizing the floppy port, or a Super Floppy LS-120. The LS-120, Super Floppy drive accepts standard 3.5-inch floppy media or a special media, which can store up to 120 Mbytes of data on a 3.5-inch footprint. The data transfer rate of the LS-120 is up to five times faster than standard floppy drives, thus, the LS-120 is ideal for the transfer of large files and system upgrades/ backup operations. The LS-120 drive has an IDE interface instead of floppy interface, thus, the DDrive module may occupy one 2.5-inch IDE hard drive and one LS-120 drive, or, two 2.5-inch IDE HOD drives and one standard floppy drive. For applications requiring an external AT API CDROM/DVD drive, the DDrive module may accommodate one such drive via a 40 -pin header. This is available in the front of the module, along with a four-pin power connector to power the CDROM. In such configurations, only one 2.5-inch IDE HOD drive and one standard floppy drive may be used on the DDrive module.

The VME P1, along with P2 connectors on the DDrive module, provides the power requirements for the drives. The +SV along with the +12V is fuse-protected and conditioned prior to powering the drives on board. The VME P2 connector provides the IDE and the Floppy signals from the SBC via a 64-pin VME P2 to P2 connector which is included with the module. The pin assignments for all GMS Pentium-based Single Board Computers are the same, thus, this module may be used with any GMS Pentium SBC module.

The Mini DDrive module front panel contains one green LED for "GoodPower" indication and one red LED which illuminates whenever an IDE drive is accessed. The drive type and the drive capacity are user options and are installed by the factory. Further, to speed up development, the DDrive may be ordered from GMS with the Operating System of choice pre-installed for any of the GMS SBC products.