Board Helps Assess Feasibility Of Serial-To-PCI Card Designs

A board based around the firm’s OX16PCI954, an integrated quad UART and multi-function PCI controller chip with built-in local bus interface, can help designers rapidly assess the ease and simplicity with which a multi-serial port-to-PCI card can be built. The OX16PCI954 device’s function 0 controls the four internal UARTs and its function 1 controls the local bus/parallel port.The board enables four serial ports to be used and allows selection of an additional four ports by means of the firm’s standard quad UART (OX16C954) connected to the local bus. Each quad UART has two ports configured for RS-232 operation and the other two ports are set for RS-422 operation. Software drivers for Windows 95, 98 and NT4 are provided. The drivers have been developed to use many of the chip’s advanced features, which maximize data throughput while creating minimal PCI bus bandwidth usage and host CPU usage.