Evaluation kit adds instant serial connection to PC Card and Compact Flash ports

Featuring the OXCF950B high-speed UART with integrated PC Card and Compact Flash interface, the EV-OXCF950B evaluation kit from Oxford Semiconductor provides all the hardware and software needed to implement a 15Mbps full duplex asynchronous UART channel that plugs into a Compact Flash port directly and a PC Card port via a standard adaptor.

Supplied complete with PC driver software and an on-board RS232C line driver, the kit can be used to create a serial port appearing transparently as a standard COM. Alternatively the OXCF950B's embedded compatibility mode allows the UART to work with 16C550 standard OS drivers.

The kit also allows add-on card designers to evaluate the OXCF950B as a fast serial communications link between microcontroller based applications and the PC Card or Compact Flash port of a MAC, PC or PDA for example and removes all the complexity of interfacing. In addition, the OXCF950B provides an 8-bit local bus interface.

Interfacing with the OXCF950B, a Microwireä programmed EEPROM is also incorporated on the evaluation board. Enabling greater differentiation between add-in card products it allows designers to modify the bridge chip's attribute memory, UART and Local bus configuration registers either during power-up or hard/soft reset.

Since the OXCF950B is software compatible with its predecessor the OXCF950 and the widely used 16C550 devices and equivalents, the evaluation kit will help to significantly reduce product development times.