The Extended PC Card complies to the PC Card standard with the exception of the mechanics at the rear side. On one hand it acts as a plug-in module for notebooks, on the other, it is being used in ABB’s protection and control relays.
The Extended PC Card is a redundant communication board for protection units in high voltage power transmission and distribution systems. It provides an IEC61850 interface per Ethernet 10/100TBase connection. To disburden the application in the host system, the card is equiped with a Motorola MPC823 PowerPC running at 50MHz.
The FPGA for the PCMCIA interface and system support logic is based on a Actel device – A54SX16A Design language is VHDL. It encapsulates the interface between the PC Card host and the local processor system. The system on the card consists of the CPU, 32MByte SDRAM, 8MByte FLASH, two MAC/PHY’s and the FPGA.
Developed for ABB Schweiz AG, Utility Automation: www.abb.ch