GE
Intelligent Platforms

PMC-422

Eight Port Serial Controller
Features
•t PMC form factor
•t Eight port RS232/RS422/RS485 serial
controller
•t PCI bus 2.2 target interface compliant up
to 33 MHz clock, 32-bit bus
•t Eight high performance 16C550 UARTs
with 64 bytes of TX/RX FIFO per channel
•t All ports accessible on rear I/O J4 with
PMC I/O Module (PIM) PIM422RC
•t 4 RS232 ports can be accessible via
front RJ45 connectors
•t Automatic RTS/CTS or DTR/DSR
flow control
•t Automatic Xon/Xoff software
flow control
•t RS485 half-duplex control with
selectable delay
•t Conformal coating optional

The PMC-422 is a flexible solution for integrating multiple serial I/O channels onto a
Single Board Computer (SBC), VMEbus or
CompactPCI system. Efficiently packaging
eight serial channels onto a single PMC
makes effective use of available PMC
sites. Each serial port is implemented with
an independent UART with a separate
programmable baud rate.
An Octal UART is used to increase performance by reducing programmed I/O
operations. Use of the Octal UART also
minimizes the time required to integrate
the PMCs into existing software environments, plus provides an evolutionary path
for enhanced software to further improve
performance.

Each of the ports in a pair has individually
programmable line drivers to set any of
the most popular signaling types: RS232,
RS422, RS485 (full-duplex and half-duplex
with termination or non-termination
option). The signaling characteristics are
set with on-board DIP switches. Each
serial ports baud rate is separately programmed from 150 bits/s to 6.2 Mb/s,
depending on specific crystal used.
Additionally, a 16-bit general purpose
Timer/Counter with eight general inputs
is provided. Eight bits can be set with onboard switches and read by the host. A
total of 256 combinations is possible.