The GX5641 is a 3U, hybrid slot compatible, PXI instrument card that consists of 64 bi-directional TTL I/O channels and 64 bi-directional I/O channels. The GX5641 can be configured via jumper (JP2) to operate in one of two modes: Independent or Software Controlled. The board has four 68-pin VHDCI connectors two for TTL and two for Differential channels. In addition, the board supports an I/O compatibility mode for directly interfacing with National Instrument’s PXI 7811/7813 FPGA modules.
Independent mode (JP2 installed)
When the card is configured to Independent mode the board is disconnected from the PXI interface, operated without any interaction with the host computer, and all 64 channels operate in Conversion mode only. Each channel conversion operation is predefined using DIP-Switches specifying conversion of TTL to Differential or Differential to TTL. All 64 channels conversion settings are automatically loaded upon power up. In this mode the J1 TTL connector has 40 TTL channels assigned to it and J2 TTL connector has 24 TTL channels. The Differential connectors, J3 and J4, have 32 channels each.
Software Controlled mode (JP2 not installed)
When the card is configured to Software Controlled mode each channel can be individually set to operate in Conversion or Static I/O mode. In Conversion mode each channel can be programmed to convert Differential to TTL or TTL to Differential. The board has 64 DIP-Switches, one for each channel to enable a predefine conversion mode per channel. The channels’ predefined DIP-Switch conversion modes can be loaded at any time overriding current settings (predefined defaults).
In Static I/O mode the GX5641 support 128 individual digital inputs or outputs, 64 TTL and 64 Differential. In this mode each channel TTL port can be set as input TTL port or output TTL port. In this mode the channel Differential port can be set as input Differential port or output Differential port.
In Software Controlled mode each channel’s TTL and Differential outputs can be individually enabled or disabled.
The GX5641-3 module offers the same features as the GX5641 but employs 3.3V, RS-485 differential transceivers.
The GX5641-XC module offers the same features as the GX5641 but features external tristate control of the differential transceivers using TTL channel 31 (active Hi) for differential channels 0-31, and TTL channel 63 (active Lo), tri-states differential channels 32 – 63.
GX5641 Board Side View
J1, J2 |
TTL I/O Connector Channels |
J3, J4 |
Differential I/O Connector Channels |
JP2 |
Jumper installed sets board to Independent mode, without jumper board is in Software Controlled mode. |
SW1-SW8 |
Switches to set conversion direction in independent mode, In software-controlled mode the switches states can be loaded by software command. Switch of SW1 sets Channel 0 direction; Switch 2 of SW1 sets Channel 1 and so on until switch 8 of SW8 who sets channel 63. Switch in ON position set the channel’s direction Differential to TTL. Switch in OFF position set the channel’s direction Differential to TTL |