Intial findings from examining a Tripletalk PCI.

[Doug Sutherland]

Luke,

That is very interesting.

Here's a page on Tiger 320 PCI controller
http://www.tjnet.com/chips/tiger320.htm

Data sheet is here
http://www.tjnet.com/software/download/data_sheets/Tiger320_data_sheet.pdf

>From the data sheet ... The tiger320 serial port interface provides a
symmetrical
full duplex communication link.

But this is not a normal asynchronous serial data port as we are used to
dealing
with in UARTs. This is a synchronous serial port with a clocked interface,
it has
a data clock and a frame synchronization clock. This port has more in common
with an audio device like codec than a uart. And it can in fact connect to
codecs. This chip was really designed for SLIC  or DAA connections to the
telephone network for modems. That makes sense because the manufacturer
make VOIP gateway products. It would seem then, that the synth card uses
this chip primarily for the PCI hardware interface. Most likely there is
some
kind of microcontroller on the other side of that synchronous serial port.
It
would use synchronous serial programming for communication. I have no
idea how to determine anything further than this without the hardware.

  -- Doug