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National Instruments Corporation
4-1
PCI Serial for Windows 95
4
Using Your Serial Hardware
This chapter describes how to set the hardware transceiver control mode for
your RS-485 interfaces and lists some general programming requirements.
Advanced Transceiver Control for the PCI-485
The PCI-485 boards support four modes of hardware transceiver control.
(Transceiver modes apply only to these interfaces.) You can use hardware
flow control to enable and disable your transmitters and receivers to work
on different bus topologies. Table 4-1 lists the status of the transmitters and
receivers under each of the transceiver control modes.
Note
Signal names with an overscore, such as
, indicate that the signal is active
low.
Four-Wire Mode
Use the four-wire mode for most full-duplex systems. In this mode, the
transmitter and receiver are always enabled. This mode is the default.
Two-Wire Mode: DTR with Echo
Use this mode in half-duplex systems where the
(Data Terminal
Ready) line must control the transmitter. In the
-with-echo mode, the
transmitter is tri-stated when the
signal of the UART (Universal
Table 4-1. Transceiver Control Modes
Mode
Transmitter
Receiver
Four-wire mode
Always enabled
Always enabled
Two-wire mode: with
echo
Enabled with
unasserted
Always enabled
Two-wire mode:
controlled
Enabled with
unasserted
Enabled with
asserted
Two-wire mode:
auto control
Enabled with
asserted
Enabled with
unasserted
DTR
DTR
DTR
DTR
DTR
TXRDY
TXRDY
TXRDY
DTR
DTR
DTR
DTR