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VXI Technology, Inc.
12 CT-100B Introduction
GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The CT-100B chassis is a portable, C-size, six-slot, VXIbus compatible chassis that conforms
fully to VXIbus Specification Revision 1.4. The chassis employs a multi-layer backplane to
ensure premium VXIbus and VMEbus performance and provides all power supplies required by
the VXIbus specification.
The CT-100B supports conventional existing rack designs through an optional rack mounting kit
(see Section 2). The six-slot design minimizes the use of precious rack space and is an
economical alternative to a larger chassis when fewer slots are required.
The CT-100B chassis contains six slots in the card cage, five of which are available for use by
VXIbus compatible instruments. The sixth slot in the card cage (slot 0) is typically dedicated to
the VXIbus Resource Manager.
The CT-100B is designed to operate at line frequencies between 47 Hz and 63 Hz and is factory
preset to operate at a nominal line voltage of 115 VAC. The chassis auto selects between a
nominal 115 VAC or 220 VAC line, requiring only the fuse be changed to operate at a nominal
220 VAC.
The rear panel provides a connector for 5 V STANDBY. Power supplied to this connector is
passed directly to the backplane line +5VSTDBY. This allows properly configured systems to
take advantage of an alternate power supply source, i.e., battery backup of memory or energizing
high stability reference oscillators.
BACKPLANE
The backplane is a monolithic, multi-layer design, with automatic, solid state daisy-chain
jumpering for the interrupt acknowledge and VMEbus grant lines. This eliminates the need for
manual jumpering and provides improved reliability over mechanical jumper-less backplane
designs. Instrument modules can now be added or removed without concern for the backplane
configuration.
PERFORMANCE
The CT-100B uses a pressurized airflow system. As air enters the mainframe from the rear, it is
pressurized below the cards and is then evenly distributed across all slots and along the total
length of each card slot, avoiding hot spots common in other designs. The air exhausts through
the top and away from the user. This cooling approach helps increase MTBF (Mean Time Before
Failure) figures and module performance.
High-quality power supplies are used in the CT-100B that are UL, CSA and TUV approved. The
power supplies are short-circuit, over-voltage, reverse-voltage and thermal-shutdown protected.
Auto-ranging power supplies are used to avoid any concern about the voltage source used. In
addition, all supply lines are monitored and displayed on the front panel to provide user feedback
of correct operation (see Figure 3-2).