W&T Electronics 13011, Manual

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42
W&T
Serial PCI cards
Galvanic isolation and ESD protection
Port 1 on all W&T Low Profile PCI interface cards is galvanically
isolated from the PC with an isolation voltage of at least 1kV
DC, whereas the optional ports 2 through 4 have no galvanic
isolation from the PC.
Galvanic isolation of the signals is implemented using fast
opto-couplers; driver and receiver chips are powered by a gal-
vanically isolated DC/DC converter. Please note that the shiel-
ding for the port connectors has a direct connection to the
chassis ground of the PC using the metallic slot bracket.
The signal lines for the serial ports are protected against static
discharge for a voltage of up to 15kV per IEC 801-2, Level 4.
Driver and software installation
All the serial PCI interface cards are accessible under the va-
rious operating systems only using special drivers. These dri-
vers are subject to continuous improvement both with respect
to their technical features and the number and type of suppor-
ted operating systems.
For this reason W&T makes the current drivers and software in-
stallation manuals available on the data sheet pages for the PCI
cards in the Internet under http://www.wut.de.
Implementing optional ports 2 through 4
As an option all serial Low Profile interface cards are able to
also provide three additional serial ports in addition to the port
integrated on the card. These ports are configured on the card
as serial TTL interfaces which can be converted into the desi-
red interface type by using interface modules.
It must be noted however that the optional ports 2 through 4
are not galvanically isolated from each other or from the PC, so
that these ports may be used only for connecting peripherals