This half length card can accept up to 6 user selectable Protocol Interface Modules (PIM’s). These modules act as the interface between the data buses to be analysed or simulated, and the onboard microprocessor and are available for a number of avionics databus protocols including ARINC 419/429, MIL-STD-1553, RS-422, RS485, RS232, Panavia and Discretes. The high speed STANAG-3838/3910 protocol is supported with a dedicated PCI interface card.

The different protocol interface modules can be mixed as required onto a single ATT-DAS PCI/12. The onboard microprocessor detects the type of each of the modules, and configures them accordingly. This means that a system containing, for example, 2 ARINC 429 Bus Monitors, 2 ARINC 429 Transmitters, and a full function Mil-Std-1553 BC,MRT,MT module can be accommodated on one ATT-DAS PCI/12 card.

To allow much larger systems to be constructed, it is possible to install multiple cards into a single PC. Each card could contain up to 12 channels, and so much larger systems can be built. The system clock can be daisy chained across boards to ensure that the time tag’s on different boards do not drift with respect to each other due to crystal tolerances.

The ATT-DAS PCI/12 cards are full ‘Plug & Play’ compatible and are automatically recognised when plugged into a PC with Windows 95 operating system. Multiple cards can therefore be configured with the minimum amount of user intervention and can be in use in the minimum amount of time.

In Acquisition mode, each Bus Monitor channel can filter and time tag the data to 1uS accuracy. Acquired data is placed in a buffer for subsequent reading by the host computer and recording to disk. An interrupt can be generated when the data is captured. Acquisition is concurrent with other modes of operation.

In Transmission mode, each Transmitter channel is totally independent and has its own dual port memory area containing the data for it to transmit and any setup conditions applicable to that channel. Transmission can be synchronised to trigger conditions set on this card or any other ATT card in the system. Interrupts can be generated when specified data is transmitted.

For a turn-key solution to many applications, a menu driven software package running under Microsoft Windows is available, see http://gssprojects.com.