Compal POST diagnostic card - Additional

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This article is the expansion of Compal_POST_diagnostic_card article

Introduction

Compal POST diagnostic card is highly important for one of the ongoing projects (related to Bus Pirate as well!). It is unknown if there is an official website / product page for this debug card, and it was quite hard to find these materials shown below - they are constantly appearing / disappearing at various Chinese websites. Hopefully these materials could stay at this DP wiki page for developer's convenience - their total "weight" is just about 1 MB...

Especially important are the images from Information and Manual sections. Although they do not have an English alternative, it could be possible to use various OCR services to extract the Chinese characters from picture to text form and then use the online translators - which could give more knowledge after this card. I have been doing this for a while while creating the primary Compal_POST_diagnostic_card article, but the obtained information is incomplete and might be imperfect...

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Structure

1) MiniPCI-E: support for LPC interface at Compal and other supported motherboards

2) LPC interface: second way to connect to laptop's motherboard

3) Serial port: alternative way to connect to laptop's motherboard

4) Dedicated chips: for processing the MiniPCI-E, LPC and serial port signals

5) Two seven-segment displays: for displaying the diagnostic results

6) Factory interface: used only by POST card's manufacturer (to flash its' firmware?)

7) LEDs: display the status of CLK and RST signals

CLK is blinking during the normal operation of POST card - if it was connected to the compatible laptop motherboard which has been turned on later (don't insert/extract the POST card while the motherboard is powered)

RST lights when the card gets LPC Reset (LRSTJ) signal.

If the POST card is stuck at EE code or cycles between 00 and EE, it could be that a card is faulty... If it is stuck at 00 code, it is probably because the motherboard is incompatible or its' BIOS is empty (has not been flashed or flashed improperly)

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