The attached board is a 4 channel DB37 pci card with Altera Cyclone II chip (the large one) for high speed data receiving and transferring to the software. A friend said it is a Comm-Tech card but I am not sure. I couldn't identify the 4 chip (U4,U6,U8 and U9) close to the DB37 connector. These are identical and can help to find a similar replacement card. Anyone can identify these 4 chips?
Is this a 4 channel RS-232 or RS-422/RS-485?
4-port cards are hard to find but 2-port ones are plentiful, if you have a spare PCI slot you could use two 2-port cards instead. The Cyclone II is a FPGA so its quite likely the original card is custom made for a specific purpose and no direct replacement may be available.
This card has both ISA and PCI versions. Each version has its own DLL and a SAXAD.sys file which software uses these files as driver I think to communicate with the card and capture data. Data comes from a PDC (position decoding circuit) and PDC capture position data from a detector and after decoding send decoded data to the card through its DB37 pin connector. Replacement card got to have a DB37 connector.
@betwixt
Brian
There are plenty 4 port cards. Foe example Look here:
We know even less. Presently it's not clear if the board is just a 4-port communication card or has additional features. Even in the former case, the addressed replacement boards must not necessarily fit the software interface.
What's your exact problem? Repair or getting additional boards to upgrade your instrument? Can you get still support from the original system vendor?
If you have at least one board with healthy configuration memory, the board can be recreated. Cyclone II is presently still on stock.
Adding to what FvM wrote, only one of the cards on that web page is a quad 422/485 type. They may all have 4 ports but most are LVDS or RS232 interfaces.
We don't have the board and it is very old and original vendor does not have it. Either I should find a replacement or a used one. We only have a photo of it I have uploaded. There is a DLL and a sys file we have which software uses these files for driving the card. In a document I found it says "Set the switches to address 340 by setting A6,A8 and A9 to open or down. All others are up. EMBEDED MSPhotoEd.3".
Strange it has address select links but has a PCI bus interface.
I would guess, the FPGA is nothing more than an address decoder and four UARTS. Finding a drop-in replacement will be hard if it doesn't follow PCI enumerator rules but you might be able to get a standard 4-port serial card that uses generic drivers and add your own RS422/485 driver ICs to it. It depends on what exactly the card connects to and whether is contains circuits specific to one task.