November 17, 2011 - The MESA 5I25 is a low cost general purpose programmable industrial I/O card for the PCI bus. The 5I25 is a low profile PCI card that uses standard parallel port pinouts and connectors for compatibility with most parallel port interfaced motion control / CNC breakout cards / multi axis step motor drives, allowing a motion control performance boost while retaining a reliable real time PCI interface. Unlike the parallel port that the 5I25 replaces, each I/O bit has individually programmable direction and function.
Open source FPGA firmware configurations are provided for hardware step/dir generation, PWM generation, analog servo control, absolute (SSI and BISS) and incremental encoder counting, real time remote I/O, timing, event counting, and high speed serial communication. All 5I25 I/O bits are 5V tolerant. The 5I25 has a 25 pin DB25F back panel connector and a 26 pin header for the second I/O port. PCI bus interface is 3.3V and 5V compatible.
A jumper selectable PTC protected power option allows 1A of 5V power to be supplied the external daughtercards. Four layer construction is used to minimize radiated EMI and provide optimum ground and power integrity. A series of daughtercards are available for industrial motion control, CNC retrofit, high speed real time I/O, RS-422 interfaces, encoder counting, and other applications. Price of the 5I25 is $64 in 100's.
