"ETX is a 16-year-old form factor widely used in industrial automation, transportation and medical appliances, with many of them now nearing an end of life status. Most embedded system providers in the market are not developing new ETX products anymore. However, keeping our customers’ interests in mind, ADLINK Technology strives to maintain its ETX product offering, so that our customers using ETX-based systems can easily upgrade their systems to a higher performance level at a fraction of the cost and maximize their return on investment", said Henk van Bremen, director of ADLINK’s Module Computing Product Segment.

Being a drop in replacement for older ETX modules, ETX-BT supports all legacy interfaces of the ETX form factor such as dual PATA IDE with Master/Slave, ISA-bus, PCI-bus, serial/parallel ports, Intel-based 10/100Mbps LAN, analog VGA and LVDS. However, it also provides access to new interfaces without the need to modify the carrier board by using low-profile flat cable connectors for Gigabit Ethernet, DDI graphics and XDP CPU debug; as well as onboard connectors for SATA ports and fan power with SmartFan control.

Last but not least, ETX-BT is equipped with a SEMA board controller, the heart of ADLINK’s Smart Embedded Management Agent remote monitoring, control and cloud technology, which provides access to voltage/current monitoring, power sequence debug support, AT/ATX mode control, logistics and forensic information, watchdog timer. SEMA minimizes the need for physical visits by engineers or technicians to perform repairs and maintenance jobs, thus reducing related expenditures.

Current users of ETX-based systems who are seeking to prolong the service life of their equipment do not have to modify their carrier board to upgrade their systems. They can simply replace their outdated modules with the ADLINK ETX-BT to gain improved computational power and access to the latest features. With the ETX-BT, customers can revamp their systems with minimum cost and extend product life by another 7 years, well into 2021.