Configure PCI-DIO-32HS card

[sj]

Hi,

I am going to use PCI-DIO-32HS card with LabView or Visual Basic as a test station for our product. The main task of the test station is to read and write to a 4K 16-bit dual port RAM. We need to have 16 bit of data, 12 bit of address bus and 8 control lines. All of these count to 36 I/O lines which exceed 32.

However since we may not need to use the handshakings, I guess we can use the 8 control lines on DIO card.

I wonder whether there is any bad impact of using these control line as general purpose I/O lines.

Thanks,

Shijun

[Geneva L.]

Shijun,

If you do not require any timing for your digital I/O (just doing software-timed reads and writes to the lines), then yes, you can use those control lines as inputs and/or outputs. Again, this is unstrobed I/O, where you do not plan on doing any handshaking or pattern generation (input or output a pattern based on a clock signal). You can find information in the 653x User Manual in Chapter 2. Look in the section entitled "Using Control Lines as Extra Unstrobed Data Lines". There is a table describing which control lines are input and which are output, and there are some flow charts describing how to do it in your program. The manual is available at the http://www.ni.com/support pages.

Regards,
Geneva L.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments