Serial interface controller

The idea of building a Serial Interface Controller (SIC) proposed by Paul O`Connor, Instrumentation Division, BNL is to determine the feasibility of incorporating a Serial Interface Controlled CMOS IC`s for charge amplification, shaping, analog storage and multiplexing used in particle detectors for high energy physics experiments. The serial data pumped into the CMOS ICs will be used to control many circuit parameters like digitally controlled gain, shaping time, precision preamplifier calibration circuits and many other parameters like timing discriminators mode of operation. The SIC board built will be tested on a Serial Interface Controlled Digital - to - Analog Convertor, which follows either Motorola`s SPI/QSPI or National Semiconductors Microwire interface technique. The DAC chosen for this was MAXIM`s MAX537, a Quad, 12-bit DAC. The function of this controller can be achieved by using some on-shelf micro-controllers like the Motorola`s MC68HC11, which offers dedicated SPI ports. The drawback encountered in using this controller is the overhead involved in putting together an user interface where the user can dynamically change its settings and load the SIC device. This is very critical in testing fewer number of CMOS IC`s having SIC. The SIC board described here takes care of this dynamic user interface issue.