An intelligent CAMAC I/O module based on the signetics 8X300 microcontroller

An intelligent CAMAC I/O module based on the Signetics 8X300 microcontroller has been developed. Sixteen 8-bit I/O ports have been utilized; eight are dedicated to data transfers with external devices and/or processes and eight are dedicated to communication with the CAMAC dataway. Separate status and data registers are provided. The input status port (SIN) can receive up to seven individual signals from external devices or the host computer while the output status port (SOUT) can be used to provide up to seven internally graded LAMs and one bit can be used to generate a Q-response for termination of block transfers. Diagnostic software has been developed to operate on the host computer which fully tests all implemented instructions. In our application the device is used in a high-speed memory mapping scheme for data acquisition with a two-dimensional position-sensitive detector system. (orig.)