PDA14 Signatec 2 Channel, 14-Bit Waveform Digitizer

The Signatec PDA14 2 Channel, 14-Bit Waveform Digitizer is a dual channel waveform capture board which provides a tremendous combination of high speed and high resolution along with an extremely large memory capacity. The entire 512 MB memory may be used as a giant FIFO for acquiring data directly to either the SAB or PCI bus. Tests have shown that a very large FIFO memory is required to prevent data loss when performing continuous data streaming over the PCI bus.

The PDA14 is a 64-bit PCI compatible board equipped with standard ‘Plug and Play’ features common in PCI systems. It is capable of Bus Master DMA data transfers at up to a peak of 266 megabytes/second and a sustained rate of 250 megabytes/second. It can also operate in 32-bit PCI slots in which case the transfer rate will be limited to about 125 megabytes per second.

The PDA14 incorporates the advanced Signatec Auxiliary Bus (SAB) that allows for data transfers of up to 500 megabytes/second. This allows for the high-speed transfer of data to fast processor boards, such as Signatec’s PMP8A, or other peripherals. The SAB also incorporates device control features for operating the PDA14 independent of the host bus.

The PDA14 is equipped with an interconnect port to allow multiple boards to be interconnected in a Master/Slave configuration. Up to three Slave boards may be operated with one Master. Master/Slave connections are via a ribbon cable that connects at the top of the board. In this configuration the clock and trigger signals from the Master drive the Slave boards so that data sampling on all boards occurs simultaneously.

The PDA14 has six software selectable signal amplitude ranges from a maximum of 3.0 volts down to 200 millivolts full scale.

External clock and trigger signals are provided via SMA connectors on the back bracket. Also provided is a user selectable digital output signal for synchronization purposes. Effectively, twenty-two internal clock frequencies may be selected, from 100 MHz down to 97.7 kHz in factors of 2 or from 62.5 MHz down 61.0 kHz in factors of 2. The PDA14 supports single shot, segmented, and pretrigger triggering modes.