VXI Technology, Inc.
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The CT-100C chassis is a portable, C-size, six-slot, VXIbus compatible chassis that conforms fully to VXIbus Specification Revision 2.0. The chassis employs a multi-layer backplane to ensure premium VXIbus and VMEbus performance and provides all power supplies required by the VXIbus specification.
The CT-100C supports conventional existing rack designs through an optional rackmounting kit (see Section 1). The six-slot design minimizes the use of precious rack space and is an economical alternative to a larger chassis when fewer slots are required.
The CT-100C chassis contains six slots in the card cage, five of which are available for use by VXIbus compatible instruments. The sixth slot in the card cage (slot 0) is typically dedicated to the VXIbus Resource Manager.
The CT-100C is designed to operate at line frequencies between 47 Hz and 63 Hz and utilizes a power supply that automatically adjusts to accept line voltages between 100 V ac and 240 V ac. There is an internal fuse that provides protection against catastrophic failures and is designed to operate within the valid input range.
The rear panel provides a connector for 5V STANDBY. Power supplied to this connector is passed directly to the backplane line +5V STDBY. This allows properly configured systems to take advantage of an alternate power supply source, i.e., battery backup of memory or energizing high stability reference oscillators.
BACKPLANE
The backplane is a monolithic, multi-layer design, with automatic, solid-state daisy-chain jumpering for the interrupt acknowledge and VMEbus grant lines. This eliminates the need for manual jumpering and provides improved reliability over mechanical jumper-less backplane designs. Instrument modules can now be added or removed without concern for the backplane configuration.
PERFORMANCE
The CT-100C uses a pressurized airflow system. As air enters the mainframe from the rear, it is pressurized below the cards and is then evenly distributed across all slots and along the total length of each card slot, avoiding hot spots common in other designs. The air exhausts through the top and away from the user. This cooling approach helps increase MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) figures and module performance.
High-quality power supplies are used in the CT-100C that are UL, CSA, and TUV approved. The power supplies are short-circuit, over-voltage, reverse-voltage and thermal-shutdown protected. Auto-ranging power supplies are used to avoid any concern about the voltage source used. In addition, all supply lines are monitored and displayed on the front panel to provide user feedback of correct operation (see Figure 1-4).
