The mezzanine card M79 M-Module is a Profibus DP (Distributed Peripherals) slave interface based on the Infineon C165 CPU. It is thus an ideal interface solution for intelligent remote I/O applications via a very popular fieldbus standard.

The C165 CPU handles communication with the host CPU via the on-board shared DRAM. The advantage of this Profibus implementation is that the complete Profibus protocol stack runs locally on the M-Module with very reduced interaction of the host CPU.

The RS485 Profibus interface (9-pin D-Sub) allows selectable transmission rates from 9.6 kbit/s up to 12 Mbit/s. The optically isolated interface is supplied by an on-board DC/DC converter. The output is short-circuit protected.

The M79 comes with 512 KB local Flash, 1 MB local SRAM and 16 KB dual-ported RAM.

Profibus slave functionality comprises initialization and termination of slaves, additional status information on output and input data as well as security services such as DP applications checked by a user watchdog or a protocol stack monitored by the application.

The Profibus firmware consists of the true Softing protocol stack. The corresponding driver software comes from duagon and complies with standard Softing tools. It supports configuration of the M79 for each application in a very convenient way. The driver is based on MDIS ( Modular Driver Interface System) which makes the M79 ready for use under Windows, Linux and RTOS environments.

The M79 is based on the M-Module ANSI mezzanine standard. It can be used as anI/O extension in any type of bus system, i.e. CPCI, VME or on any type of stand-alone SBC. Appropriate M-Module carrier cards in 3U, 6U and other formats are available from duagon or other manufacturers.