taskit PIF modules

The Parallel Interface Bus System (PIF) offers an especially simple way to connect the most varied peripheral components. The PIF bus is a 26-pin bus with 8 data signals, 1 interrupt, control and power management signals, plus an address space of 64 I/O addresses.

The PIF interface is available on the 386EX-Card (I, II & III), Panel-PC and Mini-PC. Beyond that, with the PIF-ISA-BASE every compatible PC can be used as a PIF bus master.

At 54x96mm, PIF cards are only slightly larger than a check card. Several PIF cards can be intalled on top of each other as a stack, next to each other, or in any other configuration so long as the length of the bus cable does not significantly exceed 1m. A PIF card system is appropriate wherever the following advantages can play a role:

• low cost
• small space requirements
• flexible mechanical configuration
• modularity and extensibility
• easy protyping
• simple development of user-specific circuits

If a PC compatible CPU card such as the V40 or 386EX-Card is used software development can be done completely on a PC by connecting the PIF peripherals to the PC bus via an interface card. It is then possible to create programs in Turbo-Pascal, Basic, or other programming languages which can run directly on the target hardware.

Most PIF cards are delivered in two versions. (1) In the DSUB version, the I/O signals are on a 25-pin DSUB connector and the PIF bus signals are on a bent male shroud connector -- in each case on the narrow side of the board. This configuration is primarily suitable when the cards are to be stacked. (2) In the Piggyback version both the bus and I/O signals are on straight male shroud connectors. They can thus serve as plug-in boards for base boards or as user-specific circuits.

Because of the uncomplicated bus protocol (based on the PC bus), designing your own hardwarefor the PIF bus is easy. taskit also offers competitively-priced manufacture of user-specific PIF cards starting from orders for as few as 10 pieces.

During development the PC substitutes for the CPU card until the software functions properly. The tested program is then copied nearly unchanged to the DOS-compatible CPU card.

PIF peripherals are attached via the PIF-ISA-Base interface card, so that the program's peripheral accesses are also monitored by the source code debugger.

In this way, you can compile programs in C, Turbo-Pascal, Basic, etc. on a host PC. These programs can then run directly on the target hardware after testing and debugging on the PC. Remote debugging is not necessary!