HP Compaq dx7300 and dc7700 Business PC Technical Reference Guide, 1st Edition

Technical Reference Guide www.hp.com 5-1

Input/Output Interfaces

5.1 Introduction

This chapter describes the standard (i.e., system board) interfaces that provide input and output

(I/O) porting of data and specifically discusses interfaces that are controlled through I/O-mapped

registers. The following I/O interfaces are covered in this chapter:

■ SATA interface (5.2)

■ Diskette drive interface (5.3)

■ Serial interfaces (5.4)

■ Parallel interface (5.5)

■ Keyboard/pointing device interface (5.6)

■ Universal serial bus interface (5.7)

■ Audio subsystem (5.8)

■ Network interface controller (5.9)

5.2 SATA Interfaces

These systems provide one, three, or four serial ATA (SATA) interfaces that support tranfer rates

up to 3.0 Gb/s and RAID data protection functionality. The SATA interface duplicates most of

the functionality of the EIDE interface through a register interface that is equivalent to that of the

legacy IDE host adapter.

5.2.1 SATA Programming

The SATA interface is configured as a PCI device during POST and controlled through

I/O-mapped registers at runtime. Non-DOS (non-Windows) operating systems may require using

Setup (F10) for drive configuration.