VME Front End Carrier

The carrier board features the following components and properties:

• State-of-the-art ABTE bus components supporting VME64x (extended) applications
• Two on-board flash memory chips, each 2 MBytes in size, used to store configuration parameters and serving as a look-up table for measurement values for calibration and error compensation
• Digital control of front ends logic implemented in ALTERA FPGA 1k family
• VME communication via dual-ported RAM (contained in FPGA)
• Clock controlled via external PLL circuitry, init via I2C control
• Galvanically isolated 25 kHz external sine power supply with enhanced noise suppression through 10 on-board toroid transformers used for galvanic separation
• Various hardware and firmware configurations matching with the type of mounted sub-modules
• All sub-modules are provided with an I2C interface to the temperature sensors, programmable system clocks, and a 2 KByte EEPROM for configuration data storage

Operation Modes

Each module can be operated in two modes, Calibration mode and Normal Operation mode. In Calibration mode the data written to the data buffers is transferred directly to the module. In Normal Operation mode the data is corrected using information stored in the FLASH memory before being transferred to the module.