RTC
®
4 PC Interface Board
Rev. 1.3 e
2 Product Overview
7
innovators for industry
2 Product Overview
2.1 Intended Use
The RTC
®
4 PC Interface Board from SCANLAB is
designed for real-time control of scan heads and
lasers via an IBM-compatible PC with a PCI bus
interface.
The RTC
®
4 is based on a fast digital signal processor
(DSP) system providing full real-time control for
a wide range of applications, including enhanced
double scan head control and runtime image
transformations.
The included software driver provides an extensive
set of control commands. The RTC
®
4 stores and
processes these commands completely indepen-
dently of the host PC. This makes it possible to meet
the stringent demands of real-time scan head and
laser control even if the PC must simultaneously
respond to other tasks such as machine control and
network communication.
The RTC
®
4 offers various laser control signals for all
commonly used laser types. The user can select from
four different laser control modes. In addition, the
output signals can be customized to meet special
requirements.
The standard version of the RTC
®
4 includes a 16-bit
digital input port, a 16-bit digital output port, an
8-bit digital output port and two general purpose
analog output ports with 10-bit resolution.
The following options are available from SCANLAB:
• control signals for simultaneous control of two
scan heads, with individual image field correction
(on-board) for each scan head
• control signals for Processing-on-the-fly
applications (on-board)
• control signals for a third axis, e.g. a varioSCAN
(on-board)
• I/O Extension Board
• Optical Data Interface
Only hardware extensions from SCANLAB should be
used in combination with the RTC
®
4.
2.2 System Requirements
Hardware
The RTC
®
4 requires an IBM-compatible personal
computer with a PCI bus interface and at least one
free PCI slot. The dimensions of the RTC
®
4 board are
shown in figure 1 on page 8.
A second PCI slot is required if the optional I/O
Extension Board is to be used.
SCANLAB offers additional PCI slot covers with D-SUB
connectors for the following options:
• second scan head
• Processing-on-the-fly
• laser extension connector with
8-bit digital output port
Software
Software drivers for the Microsoft operating systems
WINDOWS XP and WINDOWS 2000 are included in
the package. They support the RTC
®
4's plug and play
facility and simultaneously drive up to eight RTC
®
4
boards.
The RTC
®
4 software package also includes discon-
tinued software drivers for the Microsoft operating
systems WINDOWS XP SP1 / 2000 / NT 4 and
WINDOWS ME / 98 / 95. However, please note this
driver and DLL version is no longer supported by
SCANLAB. Functionality upgrades will be imple-
mented in the new driver version only.
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