[labnetwork] Plasmatherm ISA Cards

[Matt Pace]

Hi Shawn - not sure if this is helpful or not, but I know we had many struggles with timing on the GCA Steppers we work on when we implemented "newer" computers than the OEM used. We would see a number of strange things happen due to timing.

I am not sure how you would prove that other than some serious timing measurements on an original setup (or maybe documentation) vs. what you have now.

Best,
Matt

---

Matt Pace

3c Technical

matt at 3ctechnical.com ( matt at 3ctechnical.com )

www.3ctechnical.com ( http://www.3ctechnical.com/ )

480-963-4559 voice

On Mon, Sep 28th, 2020 at 7:11 PM, J Romans <hromans at eng.ucsd.edu> wrote:

> 
> Just spitballing: you don't mention looking at any interrupt settings. Is
> it possible you have a conflict?
> - Hal
>  
> J. Hal Romans
> Equipment Engineer
> Nano3 Cleanroom Facility
> University of California San Diego
> ph: (858) 534-6674
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 4:44 PM Shawn Wright < wrightsh at lnf.umich.edu >
> wrote:
> 
> 
>> Hi Everyone,
>> 
>> 
>> Does anyone have experience getting Plasmatherm's ISA IO cards to work
>> with a computer that uses an IT8888G PCI-ISA Bridge?
>> 
>> 
>> A little bit ago our systems 486 motherboard partly died, I lost video and
>> replacing the ISA - VGA card with similar units off of eBay didn’t do the
>> job.  I was able to find a new single board computer and an ISA backplane
>> with 8 slots, however I can’t get all of our IO cards to work with it. 
>> This new computer has a 2012 vintage CPU with a PCI - ISA bridge chip
>> (IT8888G), and from what I’ve found it looks like pretty much any newer
>> computer with ISA support uses this chip.
>> 
>> 
>> Our system has 2 digital IO cards (Plasmatherm's 77026 96 channel ), and 3
>> analog IO cards (2 ROBOTROL ADA88’s and 1 Nova-Research ADS168). In my
>> BIOS I’m able to map memory and IO address space to the ISA bus via the
>> IT8888G chip.  If I map IO space for the digital cards (320-32E and
>> 330-33E) they seem to work as expected and I can manually turn things on
>> and off via the software.  However if I add in any or all of the analog
>> boards (address space 300-303, 304-307 and 308-30B) my digital cards stop
>> working.  It seems like they’ll get one successful read/write cycle when I
>> launch the software then stops because it’ll show the last state of all
>> the digital inputs correctly, but no longer updates any of the d-in’s or
>> d-out’s.
>> 
>> 
>> It also looks like the SYSMON software does some sort of initialization on
>> the 3 analog cards.  Depending on what ones I have installed I can get an
>> error on launch saying can’t initialize board 1, 2, or 3.  Where as there
>> doesn’t seem to be any checks to see if the digital cards are actually
>> installed or not.  The other weird thing is if I just open up more address
>> space, like 320-39E, I would expect to get a can’t initialize board 1
>> error since 300-30B isn’t bridged so it shouldn’t be able to communicate
>> with any analog boards.  However I actually don’t get any board
>> initialization errors, but the digital cards also don’t work.
>> 
>> 
>> I also have options for DDMA channels in my BIOS, I’ve tried with them
>> enabled and not enabled and it doesn’t seem to make any difference.  The
>> ISA backplane also came with a set of termination resistors, I’ve tried
>> with them all installed and none of them installed and it doesn’t seem to
>> make any difference.
>> 
>> 
>> This is the SBC I’m using: https://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkn7b/pca-6763/mod_ed19377c-5db9-4024-bf7b-c556dfb2afac
>> (
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.advantech.com/products/1-2jkn7b/pca-6763/mod_ed19377c-5db9-4024-bf7b-c556dfb2afac__;!!Mih3wA!Q9yNwQcUGHJ3Vh-NGSCXqIA7vggIyan4UeYOM3wM4fgVHh3rj8GzV2Xy-7dXjWw$
>> )
>> 
>> 
>> This is the PCI - ISA bridge chip: http://www.ite.com.tw/uploads/product_download/IT8888G_V0.9_05162005.pdf
>> (
>> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.ite.com.tw/uploads/product_download/IT8888G_V0.9_05162005.pdf__;!!Mih3wA!Q9yNwQcUGHJ3Vh-NGSCXqIA7vggIyan4UeYOM3wM4fgVHh3rj8GzV2XyDStyCOY$
>> )
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Shawn Wright
>> Lurie Nanofabrication Facility
>> University of Michigan
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>> labnetwork at mtl.mit.edu
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>> 
>> 
> 
>
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