UART bridge chip links to COM port and Flash

By connecting an SD Flash Card or SD controller to the parallel port of an Elan VPU device, data can be accessed simultaneously with an active COM port connection to the UART.

By connecting an SD Flash Card or SD controller to the parallel port of an Elan VPU device, data can be accessed simultaneously with an active COM port connection to the UART.

This means that a PCMCIA or CF card, such as an RFID reader for example, using Elan's VPU bridge chip, can access data that are resident in Flash as well as providing the COM port for linking to the RFID module.

This feature is proving to be a must-have in a whole host of industrial and commercial applications.

The fact that both the VPU16550 and the smaller VPU16551 are capable of offering a link to simultaneously use and access flash card storage has already caught the attention of RFID CF card reader designers.

As the Elan VPU is already designed to accommodate this link, it means that the card designer's task is greatly simplified, precious board space is not used up, and costs minimised.

By using a single Elan VPU, a CF or PC Card can be created that has a COM port, served by the usual serial drivers and appearing to the host as a separate device, plus a flash disk appearing as a volume letter or appearing as a FlashDrive on PocketPC.

The storage device acts independently of the COM port.

Already successfully tried and tested in a variety of products and applications, the VPU16550 and VPU16551 are available from Elan and its distributors worldwide.

For speeding up initial product design stages Elan offers a reference design kit which includes 20 VPU chips, Orcad schematics, an adapter and RS232 cards for testing.

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