Programmable I/O Card for the PC - does it exist ?

Question

Anyone knows of a programmable I/O card for a PC ?

I am lookinf for something that can be plugged into PCI slot and software programmed to generate arbitrary digital outputs such as Square-Wave clock or any Serial bit pattern.

thnx

Mark McDougall · Accepted Answer

A Xilinx/Altera PCI eval board perhaps?Regards,Mark

rickman · Answer

Actually, there are such boards.  They are called (oddly enough)arbitrary waveform generators.  I think you can get analog and digitalversions.  -- Rick "rickman" CollinsIgnore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XYremoved.Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions CompanySpecializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL  King Ave                               301-682-7772 VoiceFrederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

Hal Murray · Answer

The printer port is the classic low cost way to get data in or outof a PC.  It may not be as fast as you want and/or you may not likethe pauses from interrupts or the scheduler.  With a bit of hacking,you can probably disable interrupts to fix that.If your task is simple enough, the idea of using an FPGA or CPUon a demo board seems pretty good to me.  Pick the board to meetyour requirements.  Or use one from your collection.There are USB to GPIO gizmos.  I don't have a URL handy.(I did a PCB for a USB to JTAG gizmo based on one.)-- The  mail server is located in California.  So are all myother mailboxes.  Please do not send unsolicited bulk e-mail or unsolicitedcommercial e-mail to my  address or any of my other addresses.These are my opinions, not necessarily my employer's.  I hate spam.

vadim · Answer

I have found a I/O card by Geotest called GC5050. There are several small companies that make similar stuff, but I wanted to know whether anyone has experience (good/bad) using such cards to generate bit-streams.

I am limited on FPGAs and would prefer to have a Software driven dedicated I/O card that can be reading a simple text file containing the bit patterm ("1"s and "0"s) and outputting to its ports. Frequencies of interest are 1Mbps up to 100Mbps...

Programmable I/O Card for the PC - does it exist ?

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