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PCI-COM485-8 and PCI-COM422-8

Serial Interface Cards

Features
  • This product has been discontinued. Please contact us for help in finding a suitable replacement.
  • Great News! ACCES has designed the replacement for this discontinued product. Just a click away to the LPCI-COM485-8!
  • Universal PCI, PCI-X, 3.3V and 5V compatible (Call for PCI-Express availability)
  • Eight-port serial communications card for PCI bus
  • Supports RS-485 and RS-422 protocols respectively
  • Include type 16550 UARTs with 16-byte FIFO buffers
  • Baud rates up to 460,800 baud
  • No base address or IRQ switches to set
  • Support for Wind River VxWorks (call for ordering information)
  • Designed, made, supported, and manufactured in the USA
These are eight-port, asynchronous, serial communication cards designed for use on the PCI bus. They support RS-485 and RS-422 communications. The cards are ¾ length and may be installed in any 5-volt PCI slot in IBM and compatible personal computers. Normally, these units are supplied with an eight-connector breakout cable. However, they are available without that cable as models PCI-COM485-8S1 and PCI-COM422-8S1.

Type 16550 UARTs are used as the asynchronous communication elements. These include a 16-byte transmit/receive FIFO buffer to protect against lost data in multitasking systems while maintaining 100 percent compatibility with the original IBM serial port.

Crystal oscillators located on the cards permit precise baud rate capability up to 115,200. Higher baud rates, up to 460,800 baud, are achieved by changing a jumper on the card. The driver/receivers used, type 75176, are capable of driving long communication lines at high baud rates. They can drive up to ±60 mA on balanced lines and receive inputs as low as 200 mV differential signal superimposed on common mode noise of +12 to -7V. In case of communication conflict, the driver/receivers feature thermal shutdown.

When the card is first installed, Windows will detect it as new hardware and assign it an IRQ number and base address. There are no switches to set or base addresses to assign, making it easy to use. From this point on, the card behaves as standard COM ports at COM 5,6,7,8,9,10,11, and 12. You cannot set or change the card’s base address, you can only determine what the system has assigned. The PCI Bus supports 64K of I/O address space so your card's address may be located anywhere in the 0000 to FFFF range.

RTS AND AUTO TRANSCEIVER CONTROL

In RS-485 multidrop communications individual drivers must be enabled when needed and then disabled after use to permit all ports on the network to share a two-wire or four -wire cable. The PCI-COM485-8 has two methods to control the drivers: automatic (AUTO) and request-to-send (RTS) control. Under automatic control, the driver is enabled (and the receiver disabled) when data are ready to be transmitted. When transmission is complete, the driver remains enabled for the transmission time of one additional character and then is disabled. The card automatically adjusts this timing to the data baud rate. (NOTE: for use in half-duplex mode under Windows systems, PCI-COM485-8 must be operated in the AUTO mode.) In the RTS mode, application software must set a bit in a control register to enable the driver and reset that bit to disable the driver.


Available Reference Manuals

Available Software Downloads

Drivers and Downloads

Full list of available Downloads: Software Packages, Drivers, Manuals, and other documents

Information about our Free Software packages:

ACCES is proud to provide a full suite of software support with every Data Acquisition product. We are committed to supporting the most popular operating systems and platforms for our customers. Currently we are actively supporting Windows XP through Windows 10, including "Server 2008," "Embedded," and "Compact" flavors in both 32-bit and 64-bit for all plug-and-play products including PCI, PCI Express, USB, and more. Many products continue to ship with support for additional operating systems such as DOS, Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, and 2000.

Samples

Among the software we deliver with our products are sample programs in a wide variety of programming languages. These samples are used to demonstrate the software interfaces to our products — and many can be used as-is in your production environments, or to test functionality of the devices out-of-the-box. We're currently actively supporting sample programs in Visual C# and Delphi with many devices including samples in Visual Basic and Visual C/C++, as well as Borland C/C++ 3.1 for DOS. Additionally we provide National Instruments LabVIEW compatible DLLs and demonstration VIs for many of our devices.

Drivers

Drivers for various operating systems are also provided, including active support for Windows XP -> 10 — all in both 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, and including consumer, server, and embedded varieties — as well as the Linux kernels 2.6 and newer and recent macOS versions. Many products continue to ship with driver support for Windows 95, 98, Me, NT4, and Windows 2000, but support for these operating systems is considered deprecated.

Setup Programs and Utilites

Our Data Acquisition devices also include a graphical setup utility that walks you through the process of configuring any option jumpers or switches on the device, as well as explaining a little about the various connectors present.

Many devices also include utility programs - little tools to make your use of the device easier, such as WinRISC, a "Really Incredibly Simple Communications" terminal program that lets you get started instantly with serial devices.

"Register Level" Documentation

Besides all this software in all these languages and operating systems ACCES has a policy of open and transparent development: none of our lowest-level "register" interfaces are hidden from you — we document every register in every bus card, every command in every serial board, and every usb control transfer in every USB Data Acquisition board. These lowest-level interfaces allow you to develop for our products in ANY operating system or language, regardless of our actively supporting it or having a driver for it. We have customers actively developing in ADA, Android, Python, Java, MATLAB, Solaris, and more, just by referring to our complete low-level interface documentation! And we provide the full source code to all of our drivers, regardless of operating system, to give you an even bigger head start in your own development tasks.

No Fees or Royalties

All of this software is provided at no additional charge, and is licensed under any of a variety of flexible — and royalty free — options. Check out our software license explanation if you'd like more information.

Custom Software

ACCES also offers Custom Software Services for our products. Our prices are unbelievably low, often as inexpensive as free! If you need something tweaked to support your needs, or an entire enterprise application developed from scratch, it is definitely worth your time to inquire with us, first.

Further information about available ACCES Software:

Redistributing Windows Drivers
A list of ACCES drivers and the files that compose them under different versions of Windows, so you can easily redistribute ACCES cards and drivers.

AIOSerial/VxWorks

ACCES has successfully partnered with Wind River to bring our entire line of PCI and PCI Express Serial Communication cards to VxWorks 7! All ACCES plug-and-play serial cards are now supported with our VxWorks driver, including RS232, RS422, RS485 (2- and 4-wire) and baud rates up to 10Mbps.

Designed as an update to the existing vxbPciNs16550Sio.c driver, we've added support for ×8 baud rates, proper handling of the unique register location of the 4th port in the Pericom PI7C9X7954 UART, and configuring the serial protocol from your application software.

With this driver suite all ACCES PCI, PCI Express, PCI Express Mini Card, M.2, PCI-104, PCIe/104, and all related "PCI Style" plug-and-play serial cards will detect and install as standard VxWorks SIO ports.

Specifications

Communications Interface

  • I/O Connection: Via a 50-pin, shielded, mini-scsi connector. There are four pins per port plus common grounds shared by pairs of ports.
  • Character length: 5, 6, 7, or 8 bits.
  • Parity: Even, odd or none.
  • Stop Interval: 1, 1.5, or 2 bits.
  • Serial Data Rates: Up to 115,200 baud, asynchronous, A faster range of rates, up to 460,800, is achieved by jumper selection on the card.
  • Multidrop: PCI-COM485-8--Compatible with RS-485 specifications. Up to 32 drivers and receivers allowed on line. Drivers/receivers used are type 75176. PCI-COM422-8--Compatible with RS-422 specifications. Up to 10 receivers allowed on line.
  • Address: Continuously mappable within 000 to FFFF (hex) range of PCI bus addresses.
  • Receiver Input Sensitivity: ±200 mV differential input.
  • Common Mode Voltage Range: +12V to -7V
  • Transmitter Output Drive Capability: 60 mA, with thermal shutdown.

Environmental

  • Operating Temperature Range: 0° to +60° C
  • Storage temperature Range: -50° to +120° C
  • Humidity: 5% to 95%, non-condensing.
  • Power Required: +5VDC at 200 mA typical, 1300 mW total power consumption
  • Size: 7.875" (200 mm) long by 3.875" (98.5 mm) seated height

Regulatory Compliance

  • This product is in full compliance with CE requirements.


 
ModelPrice (USD)
PCI-COM485-8399.00
PCI-COM485-8S1349.00
PCI-COM422-8399.00
PCI-COM422-8S1349.00

Acquisition, Control, Communication: Engineering and Systems