Our Coldfire/Ramtron processor board

The design below shows our Coldfire/Ramtron processor board in a typical application.

This is a medical application where our Coldfire/Ramtron processor board is the core of the unit, with peripheral I/O such as a display, USB port, and signal conditioners on the lower board. Special attention on the hardware and software design helped this device pass the stringent EMI testing required for use in surgery rooms. Our processor board and software library made this design a reality with minimum effort and expense.

The engineer can now use a pre-designed processor and memory module that simply plugs into your proprietary I/O board. Treat it as a functional block, ready to use with support features already handled. A software driver library is also available to help speed development.

It uses the 100 pin version of the Freescale MCF5213 Coldfire processor along with a 31256 Ramtron Processor Companion. The V2 Coldfire core, 256k Flash, 32k RAM, 3 UARTs, CAN support, many timers, PWM outputs, SPI, I2C, 8 channels of 12 bit Ain, and lots of flexible logic I/O are among the numerous resources in the Coldfire processor.

The on-board 31256 Ramtron Processor companion provides 256Kb of nonvolatile, full-speed, unlimited-endurance Ferroelectric Ram. Date/Time is available with the Real Time Clock. You can provide battery backup of the RTC from your board, battery switchover circuitry is included. System monitoring features are: POR and Low Voltage Reset, Watchdog Timer, Early Power-Fail Warning, Dual battery-backed event counters, and a programmable/lockable Serial Number memory.

A software library with drivers for the various Coldfire I/O modules and the Ramtron Processor Companion are available from IDC. That’s a huge advantage during software development.

Two 2x20 pin headers on the bottom of the board carry all of the 5213’s I/O and the 31256’s support pins to your board. A standard 26 pin 5213 emulator header is included to support software development, debug, testing, and downloading to the 5213’s Flash program memory.  A 10 pin EZPORT download header is included.

The Coldfire and Ramtron crystal circuits are on-board. Ferrite/Capacitor networks are included on the VREF, VDDA, and VDDPLL pins.

Board dimensions are 2.30” x 2.00”. Runs on a single 3.3 volts DC supply.