Low-Cost Fast Ethernet Interface Resides In PMC Module

Based on Intel's 82559ER Fast Ethernet PCI controller chip, the PMC-100BT module is designed to offer a quick, inexpensive way of providing additional Ethernet capability to cPCI or VME embedded systems and networks. It provides one Fast Ethernet port on a single-wide PMC module and is said to deliver back-to-back transmissions with minimum interface latency through use of two large transmit and receive FIFOs.
Other PMC-100BT features include IEEE 802.3 auto-negotiation support, Manchester encoding/decoding (10BaseTx), 4B/5B encoding/decoding (100BaseTx), scrambling/descrambling (100BaseTx), and more. The Ethernet connection is made via either a front panel RJ45 connector or the real panel (P4) interface to the host carrier board. PMC-100BT module costs $330 each, with Windows NT 4.0 and VxWorks 5.3/5.4 drivers also available.