PIPCT10-1

Advanced Counter/Timer and Digital I/O PC/104 Module

Description

PIPCT10-1 (Quartz-MM) provides counter/timer and digital I/O features on a PC/104 module for digital control applications. The counter/timers are based on the AMD 9513 system timing controller IC, which is designed to provide a wide range of counting, sequencing, and timing functions (a detailed description of this chip is provided below). The board is available with either 1 or 2 chips installed to provide 5 or 10 counter/timers, respectively. In addition to counters, each chip has a programmable frequency generator circuit that can be used independently. The output of one frequency generator is available on the I/O header. A 4MHz oscillator is also included to provide an accurate on-board source for counter operation.

Digital features include 8 inputs, 8 outputs, and 1 interrupt input with software enable/disable control. When a counter output is wired to the interrupt input, PIPCT10-1 can generate PC interrupts at a programmable rate.

The 9513 System Timing Controller IC

The 9513 IC is an extremely flexible and powerful counter chip with a wide range of configurations and features completely under software control. This chip has the capability for programmable frequency synthesis, high-resolution programmable duty cycle waveforms, retriggerable digital one-shots, time-of-day clocking, coincidence alarms, complex pulse generation, high-resolution baud rate generation, frequency shift keying, event count accumulation, frequency generation and measurement, period measurement, and more.

Each 9513 chip contains 5 general-purpose 16-bit counters, each with its own input, gate, and output pins. A variety of internal frequency sources and external pins may be used as inputs to the counters under software control of input source and active edge polarity. Both hardware and software gating of each counter is available. The counter outputs are 3-state signals that can be active high or active low. The counters can be programmed to count up or down in either binary or BCD mode. The host CPU can read the contents of any counter at any time without disturbing the counting process, and multiple counters can be latched and read simultaneously to avoid introducing time skew in the readings. The counters can also be cascaded together under software control to produce any desired counter width from 16 to 80 bits.

All I/O signals are TTL compatible; the input and gate signals are connected to 10K Ohm pull-up resistors. An on-board 4MHz oscillator may be used as a count source, or the inputs may come from the gate or input signals which are available on the I/O header. The maximum input frequency for any counter is 7MHz in the current version; a 50MHz version is expected to be available 4Q97. In addition, a 5-stage internal programmable frequency generator inside each IC may be used as the input source for any of the counters on that chip. The output of one of these frequency generators is also available on the I/O header.

A full datasheet on the 9513 IC is provided in the PIPCT10-1 user manual to enable a complete understanding of this chip's capabilities and assist the user in taking full advantage of the chip. Many of the more popular functions are also implemented in the supplied driver software and example programs.

Free software

PIPCT10-1 comes with free driver software compatible with C and Basic languages. Example programs are included to get you started quickly. Some examples of the supported board operations are:

• Configure counter/timers
• Measure frequency / period
• Interrupt-based counter/timer operations
• Digital input, bit and byte
• Digital output, bit and byte
• Interrupt-driven digital I/O

Specifications

Information contained in this document is subject to change without notice.
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