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Slices

Form factor

Slices are daughtercards which have gold plated PCI connector pads so as to connect to one or two of the edge connectors on the core board. Most slices have minimal component count, with the overall size of the slice card being mainly determined by whether the IO requirements require the use of both X and Y connectors, and the amount of other connectors is requires (e.g. for USB, ethernet, audio, headers, modules and so on).

Accordingly Slices are defined in one of five forms as follows

Form Slots Used Form Factor Approximate Dimensions(when plugged in)
A 1 Half Length 38mm x 24mm
B 1 Full Length 38mm x 56mm
C 1 Double Length 38mm x 100mm
D 2 Half Length 80mm x 24mm
E 2 Full Length 80mm x 45mm

The diagram below shows the five slice forms and how they relate to the core boards.

_images/baseboards.png

Costs

Most slice cards will be easily implemented in two layers, using simple University or hobbyiest PCB manufacturing facilities, although there may be occcasions when many components need to be crammed into a small space of complex chips are used in which case four layer slice cards can be used. No connectors are needed, and unless many insertions are planned there wouldn’t be any need to use hard gold plating for the connector pads.

Examples

The diagram below shows a variety of example slicecards.

_images/slices.png

Stacked Slices

There is nothing to stop slices from having their own shields, as shown in the diagram above (generic accessory slice with a capactiive touch shield on top).