Specifications

76 Chapter 4: Matrox Solios hardware reference
UARTs
Matrox Solios eA/XA Quad offers four RS-232 compatible serial interfaces,
Matrox Solios eA/XA Dual offers two, whereas Matrox Solios eA/XA Single offers
one. Each interface is mapped as a COM port so that it can be accessed through
the Win32 API. Each interface is comprised of both a transmit port and a receive
port, permitting the interface to work in full-duplex (bidirectional) mode. The
interfaces are on the DVI connectors.
Each interface is controlled by a Universal Asynchronous Receiver-Transmitter
(UART)
*
. Each UART features independently programmable baud rates; each
supports all standard baud rates from 300 baud up to 115200
†
baud.
General synchronization
Matrox Solios eA/XA can operate in either slave or master mode.
Slave mode In slave mode, the video source provides the synchronization information to
Matrox Solios eA/XA. It can accept any one of the following:
• Synchronization signals encoded on one of the analog video signals provided to
the board.
• Horizontal and/or vertical or composite synchronization signals supplied
separately by the video source, in either TTL or LVDS format.
Master mode In master mode, Matrox Solios eA/XA generates the horizontal and/or vertical
synchronization signals, and/or a pixel clock, and supplies them to the video
source, allowing the video source to synchronize to the board.
*. The UART implementation was derived from a design by Daniel Wallner. Please see
Appendix D: Acknowledgments for copyright information.
†. Note that the maximum baud rate is highly dependant on the amount of computer
resources available.