Intelligent comms card for OEM developers

A new four-port version of its intelligent communications card for OEM developers has been introduced by FarSite Communications. The latest addition to the company's FarSync OEM T-Series card range, the new product provides developers with an effective and reliable platform for building their own communications solutions, and is available along with the popular two-port version. The FarSync T4P OEM card and software is designed to provide a high performance hardware communications solution for companies who wish to quickly develop their own communications products without incurring the cost of having to develop and approve hardware.

Royalty-free source code is provided for the executive and synchronous line drivers with sample application, test programs and utilities that allow a user to get the card working straight out of the box.

The card comprises a 50MHz AMD Am186CC processor with 1Mbyte of onboard no-wait-state 25ns SRAM.

The whole memory space may be mapped via the PCI interface to the PC.

The Am186CC contains a quad-embedded HDLC controller with SDMA access and a full range of timers.

The synchronous network interfaces support four ports with line speeds to over 8Mbit/s.

With an optional Exar 16C654 asynchronous quad UART chip, individual ports can be soft-selectable to operate asynchronously at up to 115Kbit/s.

Multifunction line drivers support RS232C (V.24), X.21 (RS422, V.11) and V.35 network interfaces, all soft-configurable and protected from static charges by ESD protection devices.

The PLX PCI9052 PCI controller allows interrupts generated by the card to be reset by either the PC or the card to simplify card driver design.

A custom-designed shared memory arbitrator permits a PC-to-card transfer rate of 16Mbyte/s while still supporting more than 8Mbit/s line transfer rates.

The card is supplied with a comprehensive suite of software to keep development timescales and costs to a minimum.

This includes an executive, communications drivers, sample onboard application, code downloader for DOS and Windows NT, code relocator, event log viewer and card test program utilities.