Out in Front: March 28, 1996

The Hammerhead passive-backplane CPU board from I-Bus features a Pentium Pro processor and both ISA and PCI buses. The board conforms to the PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG) standard for passive-backplane CPUs and can drive as many as four PCI slots. In addition, the board provides connections for parallel and serial ports, floppy-disk and IDE drives, a keyboard, and a PS/2 mouse.

The board’s processing power includes a 150-MHz Pentium Pro with internal 256-kbyte, level-2 cache and dynamic execution. The processor comes with a fanned heat sink. The board can handle a main memory as large as 512 Mbytes of DRAM.

I-Bus will begin shipping the board in May, and prices will start at $4900. A complete system is also available, including the Hammerhead board, a 3.3V supply, an enclosure, and an 11-slot passive backplane. Prices for the system start at $5900.
—by Richard A Quinnell

I-Bus, San Diego, CA. (619) 974-8400.