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MTCA BRINGUP Adapter

Description

The DESY MTCA-BRINGUP is a solution to test and operate MicroTCA boards on the laboratory bench. This is extremely useful during development where convenient access to the AMC board is required and operation inside a MicroTCA rack prevents easy probing of the on-board components. The board brings out the first lane of the AMC PCI express interface (AMC port 4) on a high-speed connector. Ultra-low-cost PCIe are established in PC industry: A USB 3.0 connector and cable are used to carry PCIe reference clock and one lane of data. The bring-up adapter uses an identical connector, so that it mates to the commercially available risers and cables. This allows connecting the board to a standard PCB mainboard and accessing the on-board FPGAs with a PCIe Gen.3 x1 link. The board provides two power sockets (management and payload power) and two 12V fan connectors. In addition, the backplane JTAG signals of the AMC are routed to a 14-pin header that allows to connect a standard programmer to the device under test.

Features

  • Provides MicroTCA AMC.0 slot on laboratory bench
  • PCIe Gen 2 (5 GT/s) x1 connection to standard PC
  • Designed as a low-cost 4-layer FR4 PCB that can be manufactured by virtually any board manufacturer
  • Extremely simple BOM allows in-house assembly
  • Mates with cable and PCIe riser of ultra- low-cost PCIe mining kits (has to be purchased separately)
  • +12V and +3V3 power entry via two 2-pin connectors
  • Contains two 3-pin 12V fan sockets (standard fans)
  • ENABABLE# signal can be set via jumper
  • Pin header for ENABLE#, SCL, SDA, GA0, GA1
  • AMC backplane JTAG signals routed to standard 14-pin FPGA JTAG connector
  • Does not block space needed by RTM: AMC-RTM combinations can be powered and operated.

Files

Licensing

The manufacturing files provided above are available for download under the Creative Commons license, facilitating independent production.