I. Precautions for using industrial control motherboards
1. Please plug and unplug components only when the power is off. Before connecting the power connector to the motherboard, please ensure that the power is off to avoid damage to sensitive components caused by sudden power surges.
2. After removing the motherboard from the packaging box, please check that there are no short circuits in the pins or other parts caused by the transportation process. Note: Modern electronic products are very sensitive to static electricity. Before handling the motherboard, please wear an anti-static wrist strap or anti-static gloves to conduct static electricity away from your body.
3. Please place the motherboard in an anti-static mat or bag. Ensure the motherboard jumpers are configured correctly to avoid damage caused by misoperation.
4. The industrial control motherboard can simultaneously support CRT and 18-bit color TFTLCD display outputs without interfering with each other, and can be used simultaneously. A CRT adapter cable is included in the accessories. Connect one end of the adapter cable to CN4 on the motherboard and the other end to the CRT monitor. The CRT will then display correctly upon power-up.
II. Differences between industrial control motherboards and commercial motherboards
1. Size and Specifications: Commercial motherboards currently mainly use the ATX architecture; industrial motherboards use a variety of sizes to adapt to various application environments, including ATX, Micro-ATX, LPX, POS and other specifications.
2. Expansion Slot Support: Commercial motherboards typically only offer 4 PCI slots. Due to the limitations of the PCI specification, the driving capability of PCI 4 is significantly reduced, so most commercial motherboards only provide 3 PCI slots. Industrial motherboards, due to their industrial-grade design and materials, can easily support 5 PCI slots without compromising PCI driving capability. They also support high-bandwidth PCI-E devices. With ISA slots, they provide good support for industrial ISA low-speed acquisition cards and data cards. Embedded GPIO buses enable GPI and GPO functions.
3. Components Used: Due to the time-sensitive nature of their products and their market positioning, commercial motherboards generally only require components that can meet the system's operational needs for 2 to 3 years. Industrial motherboards, on the other hand, use components that have undergone extensive and rigorous testing to ensure high reliability under harsh conditions. For example, solid-state capacitors and enclosed inductors, typically found only in servers and high-end commercial motherboards, are widely used in intelligent industrial control motherboards.
4. Operating environment: Industrial motherboards often operate in harsh environments (long working hours, harsh climate, humidity, vibration, dust, radiation, high temperature, etc.), which commercial motherboards cannot handle. Most commercial motherboards today can only operate in stable environments (short working hours, indoor, room temperature).
5. Lifecycle: The commercial motherboard market has a very fast pace of updates and replacements, so the lifecycle of a typical commercial motherboard is only six months to one year. However, in the industrial market, taking Smart Industrial Control as an example, because Smart Industrial Control has a long-term strategic partnership with manufacturers such as VIA in Taiwan, Smart Industrial Control's industrial-grade motherboards can achieve a lifecycle of up to 5 years or even longer.
6. Product Reliability: Due to the market positioning of ordinary commercial motherboards, their products generally only undergo CCC certification, Great Wall certification, and civilian-grade electromagnetic compatibility certification required for electronic products; industrial-grade motherboards, because they are targeted at the industrial market, require high reliability, and each motherboard undergoes industrial-grade testing and certification such as CE EMC, FCC, QA reliability, CCC, vibration, and drop tests before being released to the market.
7. Manageability: Commercial motherboards only offer basic remote management (achieved via network connection using third-party software such as Real VNC or PC Anywhave); industrial motherboards, in addition to providing similar remote connection management, can also achieve remote unattended automatic power on/off functionality. Through the embedded IPMB and SMNP-1000 modules, real-time system operation information management, recording, and transmission functions can be realized.
