These were the higher-performance successors to the MVME197LE. They are also based on the second generation 88110 CPU and feature the same expansion options as previous Motorola SBCs. In contrast to their predecessor both the single-processor MVME197SP and the dual-processor MVME197DP provide an additional L2 cache, controlled by the 88410 L2 cache controller(s), but still are single-height 6U VME boards
The RAM on these boards, either 128 or 256MB four-way interleaved ECC memory, consisted of DRAM chips mounted directly on the lower side of the board and supposedly made up for a larger part of its cost. Up to two MVME297 memory expansion boards are supported, attached via a set of 3 golden connectors to the 197 board or underlying 297 board, if stacked.
Most of the system I/O-functions were placed on Motorola-designed ASICs:
The rest of the onboard I/O-functionality was implemented with products from 3rd-party manufacturers. All the needed functional parts are integrated onto a single VME board. Besides the break-out board that attaches to the P2-VME connector no other peripheral boards are needed. The P2-port is compatible to other MVME boards from Motorola; the MVME712 boards were the most popular P2-boards which provided backside connections as e.g. RS232C serial (mostly DB9), parallel, Ethernet (either AUI or BNC), centronics SE SCSI.