New PCIe to peripheral I/O controller comes with Mac compatible source code
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Jan 28, 2008 at 10:06am
MosChip Semiconductor Technology, a fabless seminconductor company, has announced a single-chip, single-lane PCI Express (PCIe) to peripheral controller with support for serial, parallel, ISA and USB interfaces and standards. It has a software driver suite with source code available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Vista/XP/2000/98/CE, Linux and DOS.
The MCS9901CV is the world’s first PCIe to peripheral I/O controller to have more than 21 combinations of Serial, Parallel, USB and ISA interface options, according to the folks at MosChip. The product is ideal for PCIe-based Serial or Parallel port expansion through add-in cards for server original equipment manufacturers (OEM), PCI Express Cards and PC peripheral manufacturers, embedded motherboard applications and industrial controls, they add.
The product, MosChip’s MCS9901CV PCIe to Peripheral I/O Controller, is fully compliant with the PCIe base specification revision 1.0a. It boasts four 16C550/16C550Ex compatible UART channels; 256 Byte FIFO for transmit and receive paths in each serial port; and supports RS232, RS485 and RS422 modes and slow IrDA. The MCS9901CV also provides bi-directional speeds from 50 bps to 16 Mbps per port and full serial modem control and custom baud rate support. In addition, it supports hardware and software flow control as well as 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9-bit Serial data format support and even, odd, mark, space and no parity.
The MCS9901CV, now available, is designed for both desktop and notebook applications, such as add-in cards/PCI Express cards for high-speed serial, parallel or USB port expansion. A suite of production-ready system software and hardware designs are also available. The design kits include a board support package, software drivers, EEPROM utilities and evaluation systems. Pricing varies by quantity but starts at US $9.95 per 10,000 units.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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