The Fastcom PCIe Bus, Asynchronous RS422/485 adapter utilizes the latest technology to live up to today’s requirements for high bandwidth in communication systems. The Fastcom: G422/4-PCIe is capable of operating at virtually any baud rate up to an astounding maximum serial data rate of 25 Mbit/s. There is no fine print or asterisks pointing to notes; this card is capable of running at the maximum data rate, without any jumpers or hardware changes, right out of the box.
The Fastcom: G422/4-PCIe adapter utilizes an advanced quad Universal Asynchronous Receiver and Transmitter (UART). Each channel of the 17V354 UART is independently controlled and has its own 16C550 compatible register set. Each UART contains its own receive and transmit FIFO’s of 256 bytes, each with programmable trigger levels.
Each of the four UART channels on the board can be independently configured as either RS-422 or RS-485 for full or half-duplex communication. This is implemented using an automatic RS-485 transmitter enable/disable function that permits the hardware itself to regulate data flow by only driving lines while actively transmitting. This provides increased speed and convenience over the older software controlled method, while still allowing the use of the software method of flow control. Optionally, in automatic RS-485 mode, the receiver can be disabled during transmits to avoid a receive echo, common in 2-wire 485 networks.
With the supplied software driver, the ports on the Fastcom: G422/4-PCIe will be seen as standard COM ports and can utilize all the same functions as a standard serial device. With the addition of a few simple I/O commands to control the unique features of the board, the standard software interface to a serial port can be used to simplify program design. Example C programs are provided to demonstrate how to effectively use serial interface as well as control the board specific features.
Overall, the Fastcom: G422/4-PCIe PCIe Bus RS-422/485 adapter is the ideal board for commercial and industrial applications demanding high data rates, reliability and ease of use.
Our software drivers allow the board to be “just another com port” in the system. Programming is done using the standard WIN32 COMM API. The FASTCOM: G422/4-PCIe is a switchless design that relies on the plug-and-play functionality capability defined in the PCIe 2.0 Gen 1 bus specification to determine address ranges and IRQ settings.
