1 General Information
The Quatech, Inc. ESC-100 provides eight RS-232 asynchronous serial communication interfaces for IBM-compatible personal computer systems using the PCI expansion bus. The ESC-100 uses Quatech's new Enhanced Serial Adapter design. Legacy serial port data rates are limited to a maximum of 115,200 bits per second. Quatech Enhanced Serial Adapters can achieve data rates as high as 921,600 bits per second.
As a PCI device, the ESC-100 requires no hardware configuration. The card is automatically configured by the computer's BIOS or operating system. The eight serial ports share a single interrupt line and are addressed in a contiguous block of 64 bytes. A special interrupt status register is provided to help software to manage the shared interrupt.
The ESC-100's serial ports are using 16750 Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitters (UARTs). These UARTs contain hardware buffers (FIFOs) which reduce processing overhead and allow higher data rates to be achieved. The 16750 contains a 64-byte FIFO and can transmit and receive data at a rate of up to 921,600 bits per second.
The ESC-100 is supported under several popular operating systems and environments. Contact the sales department for details on current software offerings. Most device drivers are available for download from the Quatech world wide web site at http://www.quatech.com.
1.1 Connector Type
The ESC-100 is available with two different connector schemes, reflected in the specific model number of the board.
The ESC-100Duses a D-78 connector. A cable is supplied to break each serial port out into a standard male D-25 connector. All modem control signals are provided for each serial port.
The ESC-100Muses modular RJ-11 (phone jack style) connectors, one per serial port. Only six signals are available on the RJ-11 connector. Along with the transmit (TXD) and receive data (RXD) signals, carrier detect (DCD) and a ground, either the RTS/CTS signal pair or the DTR/DSR signal pair can be connected. The other signal pair can be connected in a loopback configuration on the board. Optional adapter cables translate the RJ-11 connectors to D-25 connectors with customer-configurable pinouts.
