PCI card speeds up test, simulation and integration of aerospace interfaces

Citation

(1999), "PCI card speeds up test, simulation and integration of aerospace interfaces", Aircraft Engineering and Aerospace Technology, Vol. 71 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/aeat.1999.12771ead.004

PCI card speeds up test, simulation and integration of aerospace interfaces

PCI card speeds up test, simulation and integration of aerospace interfaces

Keywords: DDC, Avionics, Data bus

DDC's new BU-65549 PCI interface card (Plate 1) is said to enable users of the MIL-STD-1553 avionics data bus to speed up real-time simulation, test and system integration. The card has commonality with the company's BU-65539 ISA card but features a higher speed interface (33MHz vs 8.33MHz).

Plate 1 DDC's new BU-65549 PCI interface card enables users of the MIL-STD-1553 avionics data bus to speed up real-time simulation, test and system integration

Unlike the single channel BU-65539, the BU-65549 is reported to provide full intelligent interfacing between a PCI bus and one or two independent dual-redundant MIL-STD-1553B Notice 2 data buses.

The BU-65549 is believed to be ideal for users who wish to develop software which will run on a PCI card in their lab or run on a PCMCIA card in a notebook for field portable applications.

Software controls the operation of each of the card's channels either as a MIL-STD-1553B Bus Controller (BC), Remote Terminal (RT), or as an intelligent Bus Monitor (MT). The RT mode is also compliant with STANAG 3838, a commonly used European variant of the standard.

The BU-65549 PCI board features DDC's Miniature Mini-ACE Plus hybrid terminals offering each channel dual transceiver and encoder/decoder, complete 1553B protocol. It also has 64K (128kbytes) words of shared RAM plus memory management for the BC, RT, and MT modes. BC memory mode management includes a global double-buffering mechanism which provides for two sets of the various BC mode data structures.

The memory management scheme for the RT mode offers a programmable option for separation of broadcast from non-broadcast data. There is also the choice of storing either a single message, a double-buffer data structure, or a circular data structure (programmable up to 8,192 words).

The BU-65549 includes a graphical user interface (GUI) software package for Windows 95 and Windows NT allowing access to a 1553 bus without requiring custom software.

Additional features claimed include on-board interrupt mask and interrupt status registers that support flexible operation for both interrupt and polling applications, a wrap-around built-in test feature, and programmable interrupt level, programmable RT address selection.

There are also two free C-development libraries and device drivers for Windows 95 and Windows NT. LabView and Visual Basic software drivers are also available.

The software libraries provided with the new PCI card provide seamless support between the BU-65549 PCI card and DDC's BU-65539 ISA card and BU-65550 PCMCIA card. This commonality provides a migration path for existing BU-65539 card owners.

Further details are available from Data Device Corporation (DDC). Tel: +44 (0) 1635 40158; Fax: +44 (0) 1635 32264.