PRELIMINARY
August 1998
PC87108AVHG/PC87108AVJE
Advanced UART and Infrared Controller
General Description
Features
n Fully compatible with 16550 and 16450 devices
n Extended UART mode
The PC87108A is a serial communications device with infra-
red capability. It supports 6 modes of operation and is back-
ward compatible with the 16550 and 16450. The operational
modes are: UART, Sharp-IR, IrDA 1.0 SIR, IrDA 1.1 MIR and
FIR, and Consumer Electronics IR (also referred to as TV
Remote or Consumer Remote Control).
n Sharp-IR with selectable internal or external modulation/
demodulation
n IrDA 1.0 SIR with up to 115.2 kbaud data rate
n IrDA 1.1 MIR and FIR with 0.576, 1.152 and 4.0 Mbps
data rates
The device provides two methods to allow its internal regis-
ters to be accessed. It can either directly decode a 16-bit ad-
dress, or it can accept an externally generated chip select in
combination with a 4-bit address. When a 16-bit address is
used, any one of four PC COMM port legacy addresses can
be selected as the base address.
n CEIR mode
n UART mode data rates up to 1.5 Mbps
n Back-to-Back infrared frame transmission and reception
n Full duplex infrared frame transmission and reception
n Transmit deferral
n Automatic fallback to 16550 compatibility mode
n IrDA modes pipelining
In order to support existing legacy software based upon the
16550 UART, the PC87108A provides a special fallback
mechanism that automatically switches the device to 16550
compatibility mode when the baud generator divisor is ac-
cessed through the legacy ports in bank 1.
n Selectable 16 or 32 level FIFOs
n Support for Plug-n-Play infrared adapters
n Automatic or manual transceiver configuration
n 12-bit timer for infrared protocol support
n 4 general purpose I/O pins
n Interrupt signal routing to 1 of 7 output pins
n DMA handshake signal routing for either 1 or 2 channels
n Full 16-bit address decode
The device architecture has been optimized to meet the re-
quirements of a variety of UART and infrared based applica-
tions. DMA support for all operational modes has been incor-
porated into the architecture. Routing for interrupt and DMA
handshake signals is provided to meet Plug-and-Play as well
as PC’ 95 requirements.
The device can use either 1 or 2 DMA channels. One chan-
nel is required for infrared based applications, since infrared
communications work in half duplex fashion. Two channels
would normally be needed to handle high-speed full duplex
UART based applications.
n Selectable base address or chip select mode
n Support for power management
n 5V or 3.3V operation
n ISA compatible interface
n 80-pin PQFP or TQFP package
To further ease driver design and simplify the implementa-
tion of infrared protocols, a 12-bit timer with 125 µs resolu-
tion has also been included.
Block Diagram
DS012549-1
TRI-STATE® is a registered trademark of National Semiconductor Corporation.
© 1998 National Semiconductor Corporation
DS012549
www.national.com