Diamond Systems GPIO-MM-21-XT 96-Ch Digital I/O Wide Temperature PC/104 Module

Control panels, test rigs and vehicle systems with dozens of switches, lamps and status signals can run out of digital lines long before they run out of processing. The GPIO-MM-21-XT is the 96-line build in the GPIO-MM-XT series: an FPGA-based PC/104 digital I/O module that gives up the counter/timers to put 96 programmable digital lines on one board.

The personality runs on a Xilinx Spartan II FPGA with 200,000 gates and 40K bits of RAM, clocked at 40 MHz. Its code is stored in on-board flash and loads automatically at power-up, and new code can be downloaded over a JTAG cable, so the same hardware can take a custom personality. A 256-byte EEPROM stores user settings, and a 10-position jumper lock supports field configuration in custom designs.

The 96 lines are split 48 per main connector in ABC/DEF port order, which keeps the cabling symmetrical. The right-side connector includes ESD protection, and the left-side connector has high-drive logic buffers with jumper-configured pull-up or pull-down resistors. All lines are set to input at power-up to avoid conflicts with external circuitry. Where counters are needed too, the GPIO-MM-XT and GPIO-MM-12-XT pair 64 GPIO with ten 16-bit counter/timers.

The GPIO-MM-21-XT runs from +5 V and operates from -40 to 85 °C as standard. It stacks on the 16-bit PC/104 ISA bus alongside hosts such as the HELIOS SBCs or the RDS800-XT, with programmable interrupts and eight diagnostic LEDs that identify the loaded personality. Diamond’s free Universal Driver software provides the programming library.