xPC Target    

Ethernet Card for an ISA-Bus

Your target PC might not have an available PCI-bus slot, or your target PC might not contain a PCI-bus (older motherboards, passive ISA-backplanes, or PC/104 computers). In these cases, you can use an Ethernet card for an ISA-bus.

If you are using an ISA-bus, you need to reserve, from the BIOS, an interrupt for this board.

The MathWorks does not provide an ISA-bus board. For a list of known compatible network adapter cards, see Hardware for Network Communication.

To install an ISA-bus Ethernet card, use the following procedure:

  1. Turn off your target PC.
  2. On your ISA-bus card, assign an IRQ and I/O-port base address by moving the jumpers or switches on the card. Write down these settings because you need to enter them in the xPC Target Setup window.
  1. We recommend setting the IRQ line to 11 and the I/O-port base address around 0x300. If one of these hardware settings would lead to a conflict in your target PC, select another IRQ or I/O-port base address.

    Note If your ISA-bus card does not contain jumpers to set the IRQ line and the base address, use the utility on the installation disk supplied with your card to manually assign the IRQ line and base address. Do not configure the card as a PnP-ISA device.

  1. If the target PC already has an unsupported Ethernet card, remove the card. Plug the compatible network card into a free ISA-bus slot.
  2. Connect the target PC network card to your local area network (LAN) using a coaxial or an unshielded twisted-pair cable.
  1. If you use an Ethernet card for an ISA-bus within a target PC with a PCI-bus, you must reserve the chosen IRQ line number for the Ethernet card in the PCI-BIOS. Refer to your BIOS setup documentation to set up the PCI-BIOS.

Your next task is to set up the xPC Target environment for network communication. See Environment Properties for Network Communication.


  Ethernet Card for a PCI-Bus Environment Properties for Network Communication