ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the data acquisition system as a whole and reviews common Personal Computer (PC) based data acquisition configurations and data acquisition equipment specifically designed for personal computers. There are basically three PC based data acquisition configurations: Local data acquisition configuration, Room-local data acquisition configuration and Remote data acquisition configuration. There are two common configurations for immediate-local data acquisition systems: Data acquisition hardware plugged into an industrial PC and Data acquisition hardware plugged into an expansion chassis of a PC. The chapter discusses the representative cards from different manufacturers to explain each category. All PC based data acquisition boards can be placed in one of the following categories: Analog to Digital I/O boards for PC's, Digital Input/Output boards for the PC's, Analog Output boards for the PC's, Standard Interface boards for the PC's and PC based instrumentation boards. Analog input multiplexers are used for increasing the channel capacity of a given A/D converter card.
