The calculations are being worked on this week as to what the max data rate I should expect from the sensors. I just read that the serial communication to the main computer should be about 10kB/sec, but I want to make sure they didn't mean 10kb/sec. Unfortunately, some of the people I'm working with on this project are in the astronomy dept and are not engineers. I'm limited to using radiation hard 8051s which is why I selected the one from Aeroflex, so the Dallas 8051 isn't an option.

As for how this is going to work, right now the data is being sent straight through the microcontroller to the serial port, all processing of data is done in the fpga. At some moments the 8051 will have to do some processing of commands and telemetry data received from the main computer. At these moments the fpga might have to store the it's data until the microcontroller is open again.

I don't have all the information regarding what my input and output will be yet, and it might be a while before I do. Was just trying to get an idea of what I can expect to get out of the 8051. I'm hoping most of the other components on this project will have a good idea of what is going on within the month so that I can be sure of the hardware I'm looking into.

Thanks for your help

Doug