4. OMNIBUS II FEATURES
This section describes special capabilities and interface signals available on many
OmniBus II products. Some of these features (such as IRIG time) are on all mod-
els and others (such as avionics discretes) are only on a subset. If you need more
information than is presented here, please contact Customer Support at Ballard
Technology for assistance (see Section 1.5).
4.1 PCI Express Bus
Both OmniBus II PCIe and OmniBus II PXIe cards interface through a PCI
Express interface with the following features:
• PCI Express single-lane (x1) Endpoint
• Full 2.5 Gbps per direction
• PCIe bus mastering
4.1.1 PCIe Form Factor
The OmniBus II PCIe card conforms to the PCI Express add-in card form factor.
The card utilizes a single lane (x1) PCIe interface which allows the PCIe card to
be installed in any lane-width connector (e.g. x1, x8, x16). All power is supplied
through the PCIe interface with no external power source required.
4.1.2 PXIe Form Factor
The OmniBus II PXIe card conforms to the PXI Express Type 2 Peripheral
Board form factor. The card utilizes a single lane (x1) PCIe interface through the
standard PXIe x8 connector. All power is supplied through the PXIe connectors
with no external power source required.
For more PXIe information, refer to Chapter 5.
4.2 Built-in Test
The OmniBus II family includes on-board circuitry to test card operation and
provide health information to the user application. Three types of Built-in testing
are supported: Power-on, Initiated, and Continuous. Below is a summary of each
of the tests, but for more information on the API interaction please refer to the
example programs provided on the driver disk or to one of the API manuals (e.g.,
MIL-STD-1553 Programming Manual for BTIDriver-Compliant Devices).
4.2.1 Power-on Built-in Test (PBIT)
Immediately after power-on, hardware verifies the FPGA configuration and
writes, reads, and verifies multiple patterns to the entire on-board RAM; this
verifies memory operation prior to use. In the event of a PBIT error, opening the
card will fail.
4.2.2 Initiated Built-in Test (IBIT)
A comprehensive hardware test may be initiated by user developed software. In
addition to the same memory tests as PBIT, IBIT verifies a range of internal
OmniBus II PCIe/PXIe User’s Manual 4-1
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