PC Instrument Interface - IS1006

Overview

The IS1006 is a half length personal computer (PC), 8 bit industry standard architecture (ISA) interface card, designed for coupling computers to scientific instruments.

It provides 16 analog outputs. Twelve of these have 12 bit resolution (1 part in 4096) and may be set within the range –10V to +10V. The remaining four have 16 bit resolution (1 part in 65536) and may be individually configured to provide unipolar 10V, bipolar 5V or bipolar 10V output ranges. The high resolution channels are ideal for controlling ion acceleration supplies etc., with the lower resolution channels driving focus or lens voltages and discriminator levels.

The card has 8 separate analog inputs, with a range of –10V to +10V, which are digitised to 12 bit resolution. These are ideal for monitoring instrument feedback signals.

16, 5V TTL/ CMOS compatible digital outputs are provided, along with 8 digital inputs. These may be used to control valves and actuators via solid state relays (SSRs) or monitor instrument status conditions.

Finally, a high speed counting input may be used with an external amplifier/ discriminator to monitor the output of pulse generating devices such as electron multipliers. This input is compatible with high speed, differential emitter coupled logic (ECL).

A crystal controlled timer generates an interrupt to trigger the transfer of data to or from the card via the low level driver software. One of four interrupt channels may be selected. The timer, which also provides the timebase for the counter, may be set to one of four values under software control

Facilities are provided to slave multiple cards to a master timebase for more complex systems.

Watchdog circuitry is included to ensure that outputs are set to a safe, known state in the event of software failure.

The card is designed to interface with high level software, written in languages such as Delphi, Visual Basic or C++, via a low level driver. It occupies a block of 16 addresses in the 3xx area of the PC input/output address map.

Power is provided by the PC bus.

Click on the icon below to get a datasheet. Additional information and software drivers are also available in the tutorial section.

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