Designing for High Performance with PSI
by Michael Moore

In this article, Michael describes some issues involved in designing high-performance backplanes and their solutions. With his examples of how the PSI device can provide innovative solutions to challenging backplane designs, you'll be convinced that PSI is the way to go for designing highly developed optical solutions.

November 2001

Part 2: Setting a Course with Code
by Fred Eady

Zigzagging his way through the code, Fred finally gets the Packet Whacker and the PIC to play nice together. Stepping us through each facet of the firmware, he gives us enough information to apply his code with ours. The final destination on this journey–success.

November 2001

Part 1: Playing with the Pixels
by James Antonakos

A beautiful landscape or a bunch of horizontal and vertical lines with varying shades of light and color? Both. Your brain and eyes work together to instantly process these lines and shades into a visual scene, and in this series of articles, James shows us how to get a microprocessor to do the same thing, transforming pixels into portraits.

November 2001

by George Martin

When producing a large quantity of products, you can easily justify investing in the testing equipment that is needed. But, what if you're only producing a small quantity? Is the cost really justified? This month, George finds himself in such a situation and explores the option of writing his own test software.

November 2001

Silicon Update Online
by Tom Cantrell

Infringing patents, pressing the advantage, slinging mud. Welcome to the world of trench warfare, Xilinx and Altera style. Reaching near-religious heights, the architecture battle is one for the books, or at least Tom's article for this month. The soft-core combat will eventually bring you to NIOS and MicroBlaze, but neither player is down for the count.

November 2001

Test Your EQ presents some basic engineering problems for you to test your engineering quotient.

Problem 1—In power wiring, what is the difference between the "grounded conductor" and the "grounding conductor"?

Problem 2—What is an eye diagram?

The rest of this month's questions

Each month Circuit Cellar's Resource Links provide helpful links and information on a variety of featured topics.

Radar Ground Speed Sensors
by Rick Prescott

Dense Wavlength Division Multiplexing
by Brant Schroeder

CANbus Datalogger

CompactPCI Frame Grabber

TouchScreen Microcontroller

2-GB Fiber Channel Host Bus Adapters

Rack-Mount PC

New Product submissions may be sent to Rick Prescott
4 Park St. Vernon, CT 06066

Moving Forward
by Steve Ciarcia

If it werenęt for the fact that I get to meet and talk to Circuit Cellar readers, Ięd hate going to trade shows. The practice isnęt new but the procedures have surely changed over the years. Back in the early days, I used to sit on a tall stool at the BYTE booth and exchange ideas and opinions with a crowd of enthusiastic supporters....

November 2001

Take advantage of more than 12 years of engineering editorial experience with Circuit Cellar's print magazine! Full of unique, application-oriented articles.

Come see what's in this month's publication!

November 2001

CIRCUIT CELLARę Online, (ISSN 1527-8131) and Circuit Cellar are published monthly by Circuit Cellar Incorporated, 4 Park Street, Vernon, CT 06066 (860) 875-2751.

Entire contents copyright ę 2001 by Circuit Cellar Incorporated and ChipCenter, Inc. All rights reserved. Circuit Cellar and Circuit Cellar INK are the registered trademarks of Circuit Cellar Inc. Reproduction of this publication in whole or in part without written consent from Circuit Cellar Inc. is prohibited. Disclaimer