Form factors
Board-Level
Form factors, backplanes and mechanical standards for equipment that has to be serviceable in fifteen years.
Entries
CompactPCI: PCI in a Eurocard
By the mid-nineties the PC industry had a fast, cheap, well-supported bus, and the industrial world had mechanics that could survive a factory floor. CompactPCI,…
PC/104: stacking instead of a backplane
PC/104 solved a mechanical problem before it solved an electrical one. An industrial controller that has to survive vibration cannot rely on a card edge sitting in a…
VMEbus: the rack that outlived its industry
VMEbus was specified in 1981 around the Motorola 68000 and the Eurocard mechanics that European instrument makers already had on the shelf. Forty years later there are…