Chips: Motorola Computer Group Announces Intel Pentium II Platform for Unattended Operation - Product Announcement

Edge: Work-Group Computing Report, March 1, 1999

Motorola Computer Group (MCG) Tuesday announced the PATX3000, an ATX motherboard designed for demanding embedded applications. This product delivers the performance of a 450 MHz Intel Pentium II processor to applications which demand enhanced reliability or unattended operation. Also available is the SATX3000, a rackmount system incorporating the PATX3000, integrated with WindowsNT.

The PATX3000 delivers the functionality of a full-featured embedded motherboard with a high speed Pentium II processor. An ATA IDE socket supporting CompactFLASH enables the board to run without a hard disk drive, increasing system reliability. During unattended operation, its watchdog timer can automatically reset the system should lock-up occur and its hardware monitor can provide temperature, voltage, and fan speed status. "The PATX3000 and SATX3000 bring Pentium II performance to embedded applications needing high levels of system reliability. There is a clear demand from OEMs for open motherboard platforms with product lifecycle management," said Greg Novak, product marketer for MCG. "The ability to run the platform with or without a hard disk drive and to use the watchdog timer and hardware monitor in unattended applications makes this platform very attractive for use in remote or hard to access sites," he added. The full featured PATX3000 board includes 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, ultra-SCSI, CompactFLASH socket, hardware monitor, watchdog and interval timers, IEEE1394, multimedia audio, AGP slot, RAIDport slot, three PCI/one ISA/one shared slot, Ultra33 EIDE, 4 DIMM sockets for ECC or non-ECC SDRAM, and a full compliment of Super I/O interfaces including USB. An entry-level model is also available for cost-sensitive applications. Planned product enhancements during 1999 include a Pentium III processor. The full-featured SATX3000 system ships with WindowsNT and features include rackmount chassis with 400W powersupply, floppy and 9GB drives, CD-ROM drive, Matrox Millenium II AGP, 128MB ECC DIMMs. The system is also designed to run leading real-time operating systems and Linux. The entry-level PATX3000 has a US list price starting at $399 without CPU and DIMMS. The related SATX3000 has a US list price starting at $2199 complete with CPU and DIMMs. All products are sampling now and are supported by MCG and distribution partners worldwide. About Motorola Motorola Computer Group (MCG), a division of Motorola Inc. (NYSE:MOT), is the world's leading supplier of embedded computing platforms to Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) for use in telecommunications and industrial applications. MCG provides best in class solutions by combining its advanced design engineering capability with responsive, world-class manufacturing operations. MCG is part of Motorola's Integrated Electronics Systems Sector which comprises five closely related businesses for delivering leadership solutions to customers in the form of platform-based embedded controls and integrated components. Information about MCG is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.mcg.mot.com Motorola is a global leader in advanced electronic systems and services. It liberates the power of technology by creating software-enhanced products that provide integrated customer solutions and Internet access via wireless and satellite communications, as well as computing, networking, and automotive electronics. Motorola also provides essential digital building blocks in the form of embedded semiconductors, controls and systems. Sales in 1998 were $29.4 billion.