First Prize
Network GPIB Controller

Test equipment such as oscilloscopes, power supplies, and signal generators are often used in manufacturing, compliance, and other applications where their behavior must be controlled. Back in the 1960s, Hewlett-Packard recognized this need and invented the General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB), which is a multipoint, 8-bit parallel bus that uses a three-wire handshake to acknowledge each data byte. This network GPIB controller uses the eZ80F91 processor to integrate a number of critical functions into a single device to produce a low-cost, feature-rich solution. The heart of the controller is the GPIB driver, which implements a fully compliant GPIB bus controller in software by using the eZ80F91’s external GPIO lines. The eZ80Acclaim! processor also includes an embedded Ethernet MAC, which helped reduce the cost and complexity.

Ron Battles, Scott Shumate, and Patrick Jackson
U.S.

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