VXI Technology, Inc.
12
CT-310A Introduction
G
ENERAL
D
ESCRIPTION
The CT-310A mainframe is a portable, C-size, five-slot, VXIbus compatible chassis that conforms
fully to VXIbus Specification Revision 1.4. The chassis employ multi-layer backplanes to ensure
optimal VXIbus and VMEbus performance and provides all power supplies required by the
VXIbus specification.
The CT-310A mainframe supports conventional rack mounting by installing optional rack
mounting kits (see Section 2). The five-slot design minimizes the use of precious rack space and is
an economical alternative to a larger chassis when fewer slots are required.
All CT-310A mainframe provides five VXI slots in the card cage, four of which are available for
use by VXIbus compatible instruments. The fifth slot in the card cage (slot 0) is typically
dedicated to a VXIbus controller module.
The mainframes are designed to operate at line frequencies from 50 Hz to 60 Hz at nominal line
voltages of 115 VAC or 220 VAC. The rear panel provides a connector for 5V STANDBY.
Power supplied to this connector is passed directly to the backplane line +5VSTDBY pins. This
allows properly configured systems to take advantage of an alternate power supply source, i.e.,
battery backup of memory or for energizing high stability reference oscillators.
B
ACKPLANE
The backplane is a monolithic, multi-layer design with automatic, solid state daisy-chain
jumpering for the interrupt acknowledge and VMEbus grant lines. This eliminates the need for
manual jumpering and provides improved reliability over mechanical, jumper-less backplane
designs. Instrument modules can now be added or removed without concern for the backplane
configuration.
P
ERFORMANCE
All CT-310A mainframes use a pressurized airflow system. As air enters the mainframe from the
rear, it is pressurized below the cards and evenly distributed across all slots and along the total
length of each card slot, avoiding hot spots common in other designs. Air exhausts through the top
of the CT-310A mainframe. This cooling approach helps increase MTBF (Mean Time Before
Failure) figures and module performance.
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