Adaptec RAIDport

Proprietary 60-pin dual-row connector on late-1990s motherboards linking onboard Adaptec AIC-7890/7895/7896 SCSI chips to ARO-1130 RAID expansion cards.

The Adaptec RAIDport is a proprietary 60-pin dual-row connector found on late-1990s PC motherboards equipped with an integrated Adaptec AIC-7890, AIC-7895, or AIC-7896 Ultra SCSI controller. It provides a direct coprocessor bus interface between the onboard SCSI chip and Adaptec ARO-1130 series RAID expansion cards, exposing memory address lines (MA[0]–MA[14]), data lines (MD[0]–MD[7]), clock, request/acknowledge signals, and chip-select signals across its 30-pin A and B rows. At least three incompatible generations exist — RAIDport, RAIDport II, and RAIDport III — and expansion cards are not interchangeable between them; the ARO-1130U2 card is specifically required for RAIDport III slots as found on boards such as the Intel L440GX+. The connector and its pinout were never published as an open standard by Adaptec.

UNKNOWN DUAL ROW 60 PIN CONNECTOR

Adaptec RAIDport connector diagram

PinDescription
B01n/c
B02n/c
B03Ground
B04n/c
B05REQ[A]#
B06RSVD
B07REQ[B]#
B08REQ[C]#
B09LED[A]#
B10n/c
B11n/c
B12RSVD
B13CLK40
B14Ground
B15MRW
B16MD[0]
B17MD[2]
B18MD[4]
B19Ground
B20MD[6]
B21MA[14]
B22MA[12]
B23MA[10]
B24MA[8]
B25PRSNT1
B26MA[6]
B27MA[4]
B28Ground
B29MA[2]
B30MA[0]
A01n/c
A02n/c
A03n/c
A04n/c
A05ACK[A]#
A06RSVD
A07ACK[B]#
A08ACK[C]#
A09IDDAT
A10n/c
A11n/c
A12SY_RST#
A13ROMCS[A]#
A14RAMCS#
A15Ground
A16MDP
A17MD[1]
A18RAMPS#
A19MD[3]
A20MD[5]
A21MA[13]
A22MD[7]
A23MA[11]
A24MA[9]
A25MA[7]
A26Ground
A27MA[5]
A28MA[3]
A29SEECS[A]
A30MA[1]

Notes

The connector is arranged as two 30-pin rows (A and B), giving 60 pins total. RAIDport, RAIDport II, and RAIDport III are physically and electrically incompatible generations; never attempt to fit an expansion card from one generation into a slot from another. The ARO-1130U2 card is required for RAIDport III. Because no published engineering specification exists, the precise function of several reserved and n/c pins remains undocumented.

Signals

  • REQ[A/B/C]# — active-low request lines, one per SCSI channel; arbitrate bus access between the onboard controller and the RAID card
  • ACK[A/B/C]# — active-low acknowledge lines corresponding to each REQ channel
  • LED[A]# — active-low drive activity LED signal for channel A
  • CLK40 — 40 MHz bus clock supplied to the expansion card
  • MRW — memory read/write direction control for the shared memory interface
  • MD[0]–MD[7] — eight-bit bidirectional memory data bus
  • MDP — memory data parity bit for the data bus
  • MA[0]–MA[14] — fifteen-bit memory address bus
  • RAMPS# — active-low RAM power/select signal; enables the expansion card’s local RAM
  • RAMCS# — active-low RAM chip-select
  • ROMCS[A]# — active-low ROM chip-select for the expansion card’s firmware ROM on channel A
  • SY_RST# — active-low system reset; resets the expansion card logic
  • IDDAT — identification data line; used during card detection or identification at initialisation
  • PRSNT1 — card presence detect; indicates a RAIDport card is installed in the slot
  • SEECS[A] — serial EEPROM chip-select for channel A; used to access configuration EEPROM on the expansion card
  • RSVD — reserved; function not publicly documented

References

  • SOYO SY-D6IBA motherboard manual (ManualsLib) — confirms 60-pin RAIDport slot for Adaptec ARO-1130 expansion cards with onboard AIC-7890/7895/7896 SCSI controller

Category:Data Storage Connectors