Philip Covington wrote:
Definitely. We could use a EPM7032S CPLD or some other dedicated SPI chip - I think Maxium makes one... maybe 16 lines... it might be I2C... I would use a the EPM7032S since its cheap and programmable. I agree that it would be nutty to have a parallel interface to the filter board.
Maxim MAX7300 9I2C) and 7301 (SPI) might be what you are looking for.TI's TPIC6595 series are SPI compatible, cascadeable, low power, multiple-sourced and inexpensive.
Allegro also has a wide range of SPI compatible drivers.Finally, Xilinx (yeah, the X-word) CoolRunner CPLDs are very low power and otherwise similar to the EPM7032.
Lyle KK7P