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New IEEE 1284 Chip Allows Hardware Manufacturers to Add EPP/ECP Capabilities to Their Devices

SAN DIEGO, California, April 12, 1999 -- Warp Nine Engineering is now shipping the W91284PIC, a new IEEE 1284 Peripheral Interface Controller chip that allows hardware manufacturers to add IEEE 1284 features to their devices. The IEEE 1284 standard defines high speed bi-directional communication between the PC and the peripheral. Speeds in excess of 1.5 Mbytes per second are possible. The W91284PIC provides an easy way for manufacturers to add a high speed parallel interface to their cameras, scanners, printers, and other peripheral devices.

"Many companies are interested in adding high-performance parallel port support to their hardware but do not know how to get started," said Larry Stein, president of Warp Nine. "Most customers do not want to worry about learning how the parallel port interface works. All they want is a chip they can plug in and get full IEEE 1284 support. Our new chip provides this capability."

How The IEEE 1284 Chip Saves Time

By using the Warp Nine W91284PIC chip, manufacturers do not have to be concerned with the parallel port interface. "The Warp Nine Chip allowed us to put a custom device on a PC's parallel port without disturbing the printing operations. We didn't have to install any extra hardware on the PC to allow communications. We simply hooked their chip up to our processor," said Craig Brown, Senior Design Engineer of Stellcom, a San Diego-based engineering services company. "Their easy to implement chip and test software shaved several weeks off of our design cycle and provided an easy, inexpensive solution to a difficult problem." The W91284PIC incorporates all of the IEEE 1284 and 1284.3 protocols including Device_ID, for plug and play. The chip provides hardware support for the various communication modes defined by the IEEE standard, Nibble, Byte, ECP and EPP. Dual FIFOs are implemented to support burst rate matching between the peripheral and the host. In order to provide easy implementation the client interface to the peripheral is based upon a simple microprocessor interface. The manufacturer does not need to know anything about the parallel port in order to get maximum, compliant parallel port connectivity. The W91284PIC provides some client registers to control the basic chip functioning such as timing scalar, DMA enable, interrupt and Centronics mode operation. Otherwise, the interface is a simple register mapped component. From the client side, all the parallel port data transfer is simple I/O from the transmit and receive data registers.

Embedded Applications

For embedded applications the W91284PIC provides a convenient interface for PC connectivity. The parallel interface is a well known, easily implemented interface that would ensure that embedded products can communicate with virtually 100 percent of all PC's and laptops. Set top boxes, data acquisition devices and high speed modems are just some of the embedded products that the W91284PIC can enhance.

Parallel Port Sharing Provided

In addition to the complete IEEE 1284-1994 standard support, the W91284PIC has support for sharing the parallel port as defined by IEEE standard 1284.3. This means that the peripheral can share a single parallel port with other devices such as zip drives, scanners and printers, in a simple manner without the problems seen today. Larry Stein of Warp Nine is the Chair of the IEEE 1284.3 standards committee.

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For more information on the W91284PIC Peripheral Interface Controller chip, Warp Nine Engineering and its other products, contact Warp Nine at its Website, "http://www.fapo.com," or by calling (858) 576-4354.

Warp Nine Engineering

Headquartered in San Diego, Calif., Warp Nine is a peripheral connectivity solutions provider, with state-of-the-art products that connect peripherals to host computers using new and emerging interface technologies. In addition to developing board-level products and drivers, Warp Nine can also provide education, training, and consulting services for IEEE 1284 related topics and products.

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