Replacing RS-232 with PCMCIA

I have an existing product, using an 8 MHz 12 cycle 8032, interfaced to a ruggedized handheld PC via 232 at 9600. We would like to shrink the product and put it on a PCMCIA card. What are some good products and information resources to come up to speed on the serial->PCMCIA replacement? The 8032 code is written in C and could be fairly easily ported to another processor, if there were an advantage in that. There is also an AVR on board, but it interfaces with the 8032, so I don't think its a consideration in the switch.

Thanks, Thad

Reply to
Thad Smith
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The PCMCIA bus is basically the same as ISA. The fast and dirty solution would be to put a 16x50 UART on the card so that it looked like a normal PC serial port and then hook your 8032 to that serial port.

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Grant Edwards                   grante             Yow!  I'm pretending I'm
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Reply to
Grant Edwards

"Thad Smith" skrev i meddelandet news: snipped-for-privacy@acm.org...

Maybe switch the AVR/8032 to the AT94K FPSLIC AVR+FPGA I have had customers doing PCCARD with FPSLIC; and it is quite a nice fit.

You can emulate the 16550 UART in the FPGA, should not be too hard. The onchip DPRAM should be excellent as FIFOs for the 550.

There are chips with PCCARD interfaces + ARM, but you need quite high volume for those.

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Ulf Samuelsson   ulf@a-t-m-e-l.com
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Reply to
Ulf Samuelsson

we also have old fashioned RS232 link to the new laptop generations what come without any COM / LPT interfaces. There are 2 solutions:

1) USB using the chips from ftdichip.com

2) PCMCIA using the chips from oxsemi.co.uk

Oxsemi makes 16C550 compatible UART named OX16C950 and can be switched to diffent bus modes at reset. This way you have a single chip solution with the complex addressing modes of PCMCIA.

Both attempts do not require writing own drivers becouse they are free from the semi makers for most windows systems. Your application sees virtual com port and dont need any changes. Of coarse in case of PCMCIA you can add own eeprom with custom data and write own CIS

Reply to
Janvi

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