
ASIX ELECTRONICS CORPORATION
5
AX88790 L 3-in-1 PCMCIA Fast Ethernet Controller
1.0 Introduction
1.1 General Description:
The AX88790 provides industrial standard NE2000 registers level compatible instruction set. Various drivers are easy
acquired, maintenance and usage with no pain and tears
The AX88790 Fast Ethernet Controller is a high performance and highly integrated PCMCIA bus Ethernet Controller
with embedded 10/100Mbps PHY/Transceiver and 8K*16 bit SRAM. The AX88790 contains a 16 bit PCMCIA
interfaces to host CPU and compliant with PC Card Standard – February 1995. The AX88790 implements both 10Mbps
and 100Mbps Ethernet function based on IEEE802.3 / IEEE802.3u LAN standard. The AX88790 also provides an extra
IEEE802.3u compliant media-independent interface (MII) to support other media applications. Using MII interface,
Home LAN PHY type media can be supported. The AX88790 is also built in interface to connect FAX/MODEM chipset
with parallel bus interface.
The main difference between AX88790 and AX88190 are: 1) Embedded packet buffer memory 2) Built-in 10/100Mbps
PHY/Transceiver 3) Replace memory I/F with PHY/Transceiver I/F. 4) Fix OE# signal synchronous problem 5) Fix
interrupt status can’t always clean up problem of AX88190. 6) Add 3 general-purpose input pins.
AX88790 use 128-pin LQFP low profile package, 25MHz operation, and single 3.3V operation with 5V I/O tolerance.
The ultra low power consumption is an outstanding feature and enlarges the application field. It is suitable for some
power consumption sensitive product like Compact Flash Adapter Card, PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) and Palm size
computer …etc.
1.2 AX88790 Block Diagram:
Ctl BUS
Fig - 1 AX88790 Block Diagram
MAC
Core
&
PHY
8K* 16 SRAM
and Memory Arbiter
Remote
DMA
FIFOs
NE2000/GPI
Registers
PCMCIA Interface
STA
SEEPROM
LOADER I/F
SD[15:0]
SA[9:0]
MII I/F
SMDC
SMDIO
EECS
EECK
EEDI
EEDO
MODEM
I/F
TPI, TPO
GPI