NAME

DESCRIPTION

The Advanced Micro Devices Am9513 System Timing Controller chip (and compatible chips) are used in counter/timer ISA and PCI cards from a number of vendors, including the Measurement Computing (formerly ComputerBoards) CIO-CTR05/10/20 ISA cards, the Keithley-Metrabyte Model CTM-05/10 ISA cards, the Scientific Solutions Labmaster series ISA and PCI cards, the Kontron PCIDCC5/20-P PCI cards and similar models from other manufactures. (Note: the Measurement Computing PCI-CTR05 card has a design flaw that makes it unsuitable for use with spec as a monitor-preset counter. The PCI IDs of that card will be recognized by spec, and the card can be used to count to a time preset, but is not recommended due to the limited functionality.)

The Am9513 chip contains five 16-bit counters that can be programmed in a wide range of configurations. Although boards may contain more than one of the chips, the first chip on the timer/counter board is used as the master timer. spec's programming uses two of the counters of the master timer for a 32-bit detector counter, two for a 32-bit monitor counter and one for a 16-bit elapsed time counter. On boards with two or four chips, the additional chips are each programmed for two more 32-bit detector counters. You can program the chip through spec to count to either a time preset using the tcount() function or a monitor-count preset using mcount().

Note, spec release 5.06.03 includes several updates to the Am9513 support. With the update, more than one Am9513-type card can be configured at a time, where the additional cards must be configured as counters only. Also, the code was changed to improve the timer gating, although an additional jumper is required to make the change effective. Previously, the timer was started in one instruction, followed by another instruction that released the gate signal that inhibited the counters. In the new code, the timer will also be gated by the gate signal, but only if the additional jumper from output 1 to gate 1 is installed. (See the HARDWARE CONFIGURATION section below). spec will test for the presence of the additional jumper. If it is missing, spec will program the timer for no gate, as before, and print a message suggesting the jumper be added.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION

Use spec's configuration editor (edconf, normally invoked by the config macro) to select the timer and to configure the scaler channels. For ISA cards, enter the base address on the Device screen. For all cards, enter the number of counters to be used on the board:

SCALERS  DEV  ADDR  <>MODE  NUM                             <>TYPE
    YES      0x340            3    Am9513 Counter/Timer ISA Boards
    YES                       3    Am9513 Counter/Timer PCI Boards
    YES      0x340            2     Am9513 Counter-Only ISA Boards
    YES                       2     Am9513 Counter-Only PCI Boards


For each additional chip on a board, add 2 to the value in the NUM field.

If more than one PCI Am9513 board is installed, the unit numbers are assigned to the boards, starting with unit 0, in the same order as the PCI bus/slot/function IDs are assigned by the computer. (The Linux command /sbin/lspci lists the PCI identifiers.)

As of spec release 5.06.03, the command

counter_par(mne, "device_id")


On the Scaler screen, the channel assignments must have the timebase as channel 0 and the monitor as channel 1, as shown below.

NUMBER      NAME  MNEMONIC  <>DEVICE  UNIT  CHAN   <>USE AS  SCALE
     0   Seconds       sec    AM9513     0     0   timebase      1
     1   Monitor       mon    AM9513     0     1    monitor      1
     2  Detector       det    AM9513     0     2    counter      1
     3 Counter 2      cnt2    AM9513     0     3    counter      1
     4 Counter 3      cnt3    AM9513     0     4    counter      1
     5 Counter 4      cnt4    AM9513     1     0    counter      1
     6 Counter 5      cnt5    AM9513     1     1    counter      1


HARDWARE CONFIGURATION

Connect the detector to the input connector pin labeled source 3. Counts received from the monitor go to the pin labeled source 5. In addition, wire the connector pin labeled output 1 to the pins gate 1, gate 2, gate 4 and gate 5. (In the more recent Keithley- Metrabyte CTM-05A manual, the source pins are now labeled ACLKIN, the output pins are now labeled ATIMEROUT, and the gate pins are now labeled AGATE.)

For a two- or four-chip board, or for additional counter-only boards, additional detectors can be connected to the source 3 and source 5 pins of the chips. In addition, the output 1 from the first chip of the timer/counter board must be connected to gate 2 and gate 4 of the additional chips.

The counter boards are accessed from user level and are polled to determine when count intervals have elapsed. Thus, interrupts should be disabled on the boards.

When counting to time, the resolution of the clock depends on the length of the count interval. The maximum count time is 71.5 minutes. The time base resolution (in seconds) is set according to the following table:

0.00001 for t < 0.6 sec
0.0001   for t < 6 sec
0.001   for t < 60 sec
0.01     for t < 655.35 sec (10.9 min)
0.0655   for t < 71.5 min