The VICbus (ISO/IEC 26.11458) is a VME to VME multi drop interconnection which is organized for high speed data transfers (up to 16 distributed crates over up to 100 meters). It provides complete VME transparency and advanced Real-Time features like Mailboxes, Interrupt Masking and Allocation Control, etc.
In the following configuration examples, VME processors access remote resources on the VICbus through two CES interfaces: the VIC 8250 or the VIC 8251. CES VICbus also supports VSB connections into the on-board memory buffer.
The VIC 8250 is the simplest multi drop VIC Master / Slave interface with an on-board 512 Kbytes Memory buffer.
The VIC 8251 is an enhanced VIC 8250 aimed at applications requiring very high speed transmission (12 Mbytes/s in synchronous mode) and is equipped with an on-board 4 or 16 Mbytes Memory. The system memory supports the Mirrored Memory mode which allows automatic data updates between different VME Crates without any software control. The VIC 8251 can also be used in VIC 8250 mode.
A CAMAC Crate equipped with a VCC 2117A (version without processor) can be accessed from a CES OS-9 workstation, FIC 8232 or FIC 8234 based through the VIC and ESONE libraries provided with the station.A CAMAC Crate equipped with a VCC 2117B (intelligent version) can be accessed from a CES OS-9 workstation, FIC 8232 or FIC 8234 based, as explained above, as well as through CESmon, a firmware package running on the VCC, allowing block transfers, Q Scan, Q stop, ... and providing other facilities.
A CAMAC Crate equipped with a VCC 2117A (version without processor) can be accessed from a CES Lynx workstation, FIC 8232, FIC 8234, RAID 8235 or RAID 8239 based, through the VIC and ESONE libraries provided with the station.A CAMAC Crate equipped with a VCC 2117B (intelligent version) can be accessed from a CES OS-9 workstation, FIC 8232, FIC 8234, RAID 8235 or RAID 8239 based, as explained above, as well as through CESmon, a firmware package running on the VCC, allowing block transfers, Q Scan, Q stop, ... and providing other facilities.
A LabVIEW package (AMM 3340) is available on the Macintosh for the control of the configuration shown above. The VME crate and its VIC 8250 interface is not necessary to access CAMAC from the Macintosh, but is supported by the LabVIEW package.
A LabVIEW package (ASS 3341) is available on SPARC station for the control of the configuration shown above.
PC 386, PC 486 and other AT compatible computers can be connected to any combination of CAMAC and VME crates via a PC to VIC bus connection (VBAT 8218).Under DOS, the ESONE library (LPD 3534) is ported on the AT compatible stations allowing access to CAMAC crates through standard calls.
Under Lynx, a CAMAC Control package is available from IBEX Computing.
The CAMAC Crates can be accessed from a DEC station through the TVIC 7214 interface. The ESONE library allows access to the CAMAC crates through a TVIC driver with a standard set of calls.
