Custom Design of the TS-734 for TS-7300

One project involving a custom PCB design resulted from a customer's need for an octal RS-485 transceiver interface.

In reviewing the customer's needs, we discovered:

• Existing COTS boards did not provide the functionality needed
  
• The customer wanted to use the TS-7300 in their design
  
• A PC-104 daughtercard solution was ruled out due to enclosure space issues
• A customer-specified connector was required
  

The solution our engineering team came up with was to design a custom printed circuit board that would interface with the DIO pins on the TS-7300 and would fit in an enclosure adjacent to an existing PC-104 daughter card.  An updated bitstream for the FPGA changed the functionality of the DIO pins to implement the eight UARTs needed, while the daughter card itself contains the driver circuitry and the connectors required.

The TS-734 octal RS-485 transceiver interface was a success for our customer and through an agreement to share development costs, we also added the board to our product line as a commercial-off-the-shelf-peripheral.