PCL-839+ and PCL-839 Comparison

With a shortage of the PDS-1024 motion chip, the PCL-839 is being replaced by PCL-839+. The PCL-839+ is practically identical to its predecessor. It's a low-cost 3-axis stepping motor control card that provides the most basic motion control functions like linear and 2D circular interpolation. Some improvements is offered though. The PCL-839+ supports a higher pulse out rate and a bigger position counter than PCL-839.

To help users migrate from PCL-839 to PCL-839+, Advantech provides compatible DOS and Windows® drivers for PCL-839+.

Please refer to the following tables to see the differences between PCL-839+ and PCL-839.

Software Drivers

• If you have designed your application with DOS drivers, you can use the existing application program code along with PCL-839+. All you have to do is replace the header file "PCL839.H" with the new header file "PCL-839P.H" and link to the new Library file (PCL839Px.LIB) then re-compile the program.
• For those who composed their application program with Windows drivers, the existing programmed code can be used.
• The most significant difference is for VC users, as the header and library file need to be changed and re-compiled.
• For VB users, the header file needs to be changed to "839p.bas"
• Because of the different main motion chipset, the register format of PCL-839+ is different with PCL-839. For application programs that are written with direct I/O methods or using the command-interpreter provided by PCL-839, these files will not be executable with PCL-839+. Please refer to chapter 4 of the PCL-839+ manual to read more about direct IO operations.
• Some of the registers read back by function "status" are not available, please take care of it. Following is the list: