Out in Front: April 11, 1996
Intel's 82380 dock set joins the company's 82430MX core-logic chip set for PCI-based mobile computers. The combination lets mobile computers perform "hot docking"—docking or undocking a mobile computer in power-on, power-off, or suspended mode.
The dock set comprises the 82380PB and the 82380AB. The PB, which comes in a 208-pin QFP, provides a PCI-to-PCI bridge. The AB, which comes in a 160-pin QFP, provides a PCI-to-ISA bridge and supports as many as three ISA slots. The PB handles 25- to 33-MHz PCI-bus speeds and Windows 95's dynamic configuration of system resources during docking. Windows 95 still has problems recognizing the undocking event, however.
The PB interface lets you connect a nonvolatile-memory device for storing docking-identification and notebook-configuration information. The interface allows docking in software-assisted or hardware-only modes. In the software-assisted approach, the docking station informs system software that a user has requested the system to undock. This request shuts down all applications using dock resources.
You can integrate the AB and PB with glue logic comprising a few buffers from companies such as National Semiconductor (Santa Clara, CA), Quality Semiconductor (Santa Clara, CA), and Texas Instruments (Dallas). The 82380 dock set sells for $31 (1000).
—by Markus Levy
Intel Corp, Mount Prospect, IL. (800) 548-4725.