Serial Interface
6
Section 6 - Serial Interface 
The DP606A and DP612A uses the Modbus/RTU interface as described in MODBUS 
APPLICATION PROTOCOL SPECIFICATION (V1.1b3).
The Modbus specification allows accessing to up 65535 internal ‘holding’ registers 
using register READ, register WRITE and WRITE MULTIPLE commands. Each 
Modbus holding register is defined as a 16 bit entity structured as BIG ENDIAN 
values (most significant byte always presented first).
Modbus is structured using a MASTER-SLAVE topology, in which there is one 
MASTER device and up to 247 slave devices. All transactions are initiated by the 
MASTER device. The DP606A and DP612A acts as a slave device, with a device 
address in the range 1 to 247.
Modbus slave devices are individually accessed using a one byte SLAVE address. 
The MASTER device initiates a transaction by sending a request packet to a specific 
slave. The SLAVE device processes the transaction and returns either response 
packet indicating success or failure.
Address 0 is reserved as a ‘broadcast’ address, in which all slave devices will accept 
and process the transaction but will not send a response.
Section 6.1 - Modbus Functions 
The DP606A and DP612A Modbus interface supports the following Modbus 
FUNCTION requests.
Function Code Mnemonic Description
0x03 Read Holding Register Reads one or more consecutive 16 bit 
holding registers 
0x06 Write Single Register Writes a specific 16 bit holding register
0x07 Read Exception status Reads structured status information
0x08 Reserved
0x10 Write Multiple Registers Write one or more consecutive 16 bit 
holding registers
0x0b Get Comm events Read communication event counters 
Table 8 - Modbus Functions
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