RTX Mil Std 1553 - PC104 card

The RTX1553/PC104 is a PC104 card which can be purchased with one MIL-STD 1553 Dual-Redundant channel, or 2 completely independent Dual-Redundant channels. The card can be wired as a direct coupled and/or transformer coupled interface to a 1553 bus. Each channel has internally, a dedicated 64k memory space, and 10 different selectable interrupts are available

The RTX1553/PC104 uses the industry standard Summit UTMC XTE device

The RTX1553/PC104 can be configured in the field as either a Bus Controller(BC), Remote Terminal(RT), or Monitor(M). With the two channel configuration it's possible to have any combination of 2 on a single PC104 card.

PC104 bus
Unlike other products which use only 8 bits of the 16 bit PC104 bus, the RTX1553/PC104 card can utilize the full 16 bit capability of the PC104 bus. This means, compared to other PC104 cards, the RTX1553/PC104 card can transfer twice as much data into/out of the 1553 interface in the same time period, and will show a significant increase in performance when switching from a 8 bit bus system to a 16 bit bus systems.. The RTX1553/PC104 requires only a single 5 volt power source from the PC104 bus

Memory Management
The RTX1553/PC104 card requires a memory window to be allocated for the card, within the host's memory space, as well as IO space. The amount of host memory space required (Memory Window) is configurable from 16k to 128k. For a single channel system, 64k is required. This can be setup as either a paged slot (16k, or 32k slot) which will need to be paged, or a single 64k slot. For the two channel system, 128k is required, and can be configured as either a single 128k slot, or a paged slot (16k, 32k or 64k slot). In addition, rather than use valuable 'below the megabyte' memory space, the RTX1553/PC104 can be configured to operate either below or above the megabyte boundary. Using the 64k slot size for the single channel system (or the 128k slot for the two channel system) will mean that it memory paging will not be necessary, which will further reduce data transfer times.

One feature of the RTX1553/PC104 is its ability to be downgraded so that it will be functionally and performance equivalent, as well as pin compatible with other competitor's PC104 cards. However, unless there is a need for a direct replacement for the competitor's card, it would probably be undesirable to purposely degrade the RTX1553/PC104 performance.

The RTX1553/PC104 card has the option to hardwire the RT address via an external connector.

The standard product RTX1553/PC104 is rated from 0oC to 70oC. The Extended Temperature version (ET) is rated from -40^oC to +85^oC. All of the components on the RTX1553/PC104 boards are soldered to the printed circuit board, and sockets are not used.