(PRWEB) April 28, 2002
Akron OH, April 25–Quatech Inc., a leading manufacturer of data connectivity products for PC-based systems, today introduced a new surge suppression package for their FreedomUSB line of multiport USB to serial adapters. With this announcement, Quatech further enhances one of the most robust USB serial lines in the industry and expands the reach of the line into systems designed for industrial and other potentially harsh environments.
While initially designed for consumer oriented desktop applications, USB is becoming one of the leading I/O interfaces for a wide variety of PC-based industrial and commercial applications because of its low cost and Plug & Play capability. Serial adapters make USB an even more attractive choice for these applications because they enable continued use of legacy peripherals via the USB port. However, as USB was not created for this type of application, it ignores the significant problem of data line surges. For example, in industrial environments surges enter a system via other serial equipment, long cable runs, external antennas or security equipment. Static voltages can also be transferred to equipment by the materials being processed. In Point Of Sale applications, users can introduce static onto the data line via scanners or card readers.
Quatech?s new ?IND? option for their USB to serial adapters solves this problem by introducing suppression before the surge hits the device, thus protecting it. Each data line is equipped with a surge suppressor that is capable of sustaining up to 40A peak, 8 x 20us peak transient surges, a clamping voltage of 30V (15.5V for RS-422/485 lines), and a peak energy dissipation of 0.1 Joules. The surge suppression package is available for all Quatech two, four, eight and sixteen port adapters.
Quatech USB to serial adapters accommodate a wide variety of system requirements. RS-232 adapters are available in one, two, four, eight and sixteen port versions. RS-422/485 adapters are available with two, four, eight or sixteen ports and are configurable for full-duplex or half-duplex operation. The adapters are supported under Windows 98/Me/NT/2000/XP.
All Quatech USB serial adapters enumerate themselves as standard COM ports, and can transfer data at speeds up to 460.8 kbps. (However, with the surge suppression option installed, they are limited to 115.2 kbps) The adapters are equipped with 16550 UARTs containing 16-byte FIFOs. These FIFOs, along with the FIFOs in the USB microcontroller, help relieve the CPU of excessive interrupts by buffering received and transmitted data, making Quatech USB adapters ideal choices for heavy multi-tasking environments.
Quatech serial USB adapters offer several attractive features that make them particularly convenient and easy to use. The adapters provide multiple ports via a single box with easily accessible connections. All the adapters are bus powered, so no external power supply is needed?an unusual feature in adapters providing such a large number of ports.
Quatech?s serial USB adapters are priced as follows:
SSU-100:
