PCI-bus multifunction DAS card

March 2003 Fieldbus & Industrial Networking Access Control & Identity Management

A multifunction DAS card for the PCI bus is available from ProMicro. The PCI-1710/1710HG provides high quality 12-bit A/D conversion, D/A conversion, digital input, digital output and counter/timer functions.

The cards feature an automatic channel/gain scanning circuit. The circuit, rather than the software, controls multiplexer switching during sampling. Its onboard SRAM stores different gain values and configurations for each channel, providing multichannel, high-speed sampling up to 100 kHz with different gains for each channel.

An on-board FIFO buffer can store up to 4K A/D samples, and the cards generate an interrupt when the FIFO is half full providing continuous high-speed data transfer. The programmable counter generates a pacer trigger for the A/D conversion. The counter chip is an 82C54 or equivalent, which includes three 16-bit counters on a 10 MHz clock. One counter is used as an event counter and the other two are cascaded together to make a 32-bit timer for a pacer trigger. Specially designed shielded cable is available for the PCI-1710/1710HG cards to reduce noise in the analog signal lines, to minimise cross talk and to reduce EMI/EMC interference.

For more information contact Elton Prytz, ProMicro, 011 706 7913, [email protected], www.promicro.co.za

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