Peter:
This problem sucks, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out why it
has to be like this. The basic answer, which you probably already know
is that the only source of such boards of which I am aware is Intel
Development Kits, which are not restricted. They, however, are
outrageously expensive ($2250 - $3000), very, very limited in selection
not really current technology (once you discount the one’s that are
advertised but don’t really exist), and, generally speaking, a really
poor product. They are part of the embedded Intel architecture
(http://www.intel.com/design/intarch/devkits/?iid=search). Most of them
come as huge, non-standard size blue boards that will not fit in to
anything but a custom made case, so you’re $3000 board is generally
unprotected and exposed, and they come with nothing else except a
ridiculously small amount of memory (512 MB is common), which never
fails to be of the most expensive variety there is. The other thing
about them is that figuring out what really has an XDP, as opposed to an
ITP or SSA XDP is difficult. The Q965 Express Chipset Development Kit,
in particular, plays this game, with the SSA connector arriving as a
surprise. They’re unsupported, and, perhaps their most irritating
feature considering their cost and their expressed purpose, is that they
come with about 32 pages of documentation, that doesn’t even include
complete jumper settings. Finally, they tend to be very quirky. I
killed one by changing PCI-e BIOS settings.
Other than this, the only source I have ever found after extensive
searching is to roll the dice on SuperMicro boards, because they,
understandably, will not guarantee or even comment on the existence or
viability of the traces. I got the tip to try any of their X7 series
from one of Intel’s resellers, but I don’t recall who. As far as
attaching the socket, we have the facilities for such services. I don’t
do it myself, and I seriously doubt that casually soldering the rather
dense 60 pin SMT XDP would go all that well, although it would be
possible to do by hand.
The only other help I can offer here is that going through Intel, even
under CNDA, is a complete and total waste of time, as is Arium, which
makes me thing that they’re really is nothing out there, because it
would be in their interest to find them for you. On the note of Arium,
if you’re looking to get one of these boards to attach and ECM-XXX,
there line just changed recently, so you might want to take a look if
you haven’t recently.
This process sucks, and I still haven’t found a good answer.
Good luck,
mm
xxxxx@osr.com wrote:
MM noted, in a previous reply, the following:
Aside from the usual, restricted, early release, “Customer Reference Boards” and similar types of systems (if I see another Ohlone, I’m gonna scream) can anyone point me to any relatively recent and generally available motherboards/systems with ITP or XDP headers?
Before MM’s post, I’d heard stories of main boards with active XDP traces (just solder-on the header) but I’ve never actually SEEN one.
How do you go about FINDing these things?
We’ve resorted to using interposers in the past, but it would suuuuure be nice to be able to plug into the board.
Thanks for whatever info y’all can provide,
Peter
OSR