
Section 1. Introduction
The PCPIC
The PCPIC is an I/O board for PC-compatibles. It uses three 8254
counter chips and some extra logic to measure 8 channels of
frequency, counts or time. It also has up to 16 digital input lines, 8
digital output lines, 8 lines of counter output and 8 interrupt inputs.
It is designed for connecting to pieces of industrial plant and
equipment and is compatible with Arcom's signal-conditioning
scheme. This manual describes the PCPIC, its uses, connections and
software.
About the PC
PC-compatibles are often used for I/O intensive applications with
boards such as the PCPIC. Unfortunately, some features of the PC
can make life difficult for users. We have tried to address these
problems with the PCPIC. For example, it is sometimes difficult to
find I/O address space in a PC - we have created a unique pointer
addressing scheme which only takes up two bytes of PC I/O space
but allows hundreds of I/O locations on the board. Another
common problem is that of getting large numbers of cables safely
into a PC. Arcom designed a signal-conditioning system which has
been in use on other buses for some years; this system is also
available for the PCPIC.
Features of the PCPIC
The PCPIC can perform many functions, although not necessarily all
at once. Many of the functions are concerned with counting - either
counting pulses in a fixed time interval (frequency measurement),
counting a fixed clock for a variable time (time measurement) or
simply counting and totalising input pulses. The three 8254 chips on
the PCPIC contain a total of nine 16-bit counters to perform the
counting. Of these nine, eight can be connected to the input pins on
the connector in some way, and the remaining one is used as a
timebase. The eight counters are in two sets of four; each set is
independent, although they do share the same timebase.
The clock for the timebase can be jumper-selected as either 1MHz or
25kHz. This can then be divided down by up to 65536 in the
timebase counter to give a very wide range of possible timebase
outputs. Generally, the higher frequencies are used for time
measurement and the lower ones for frequency measurement.
It is not just the timebase frequency that is programmable; what the
timebase output does can also be controlled by software. For
example, it can be used to open the counter gates for a precisely
determined time period - this is the basis of frequency measurement.
Alternatively, an external signal can open the counter gates while a
J230 PCPIC
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