Touch of SPice

Touch of SPice is the name given to the conceptually simplest type of expansion board. These are also referred to simply as "SPice" boards.

A SPice board is designed to take advantage of the SPice pins on the expansion connector, i.e. those spare processor I/O pins that we have brought out to the expansion connector. Therefore SPice boards will be specific to a given SPLat controller. For example a SPice board designed for the MMi99 will not necessarily work with other controller boards (though we have made the SPice connector on the SL99 identical).

The huge advantage of SPice boards is that they are relatively simple to design and make, and simple to program. That means we can economically engineer even a small batch of SPice boards for your needs.

Some SPice pins on some SPLat boards are capable of taking on different roles, for example digital output or analog input. This is the case with the MMi99 (in general we always try and bring out pins with the most functional flexibility). Such pins are configurable via the same programming model as the more sophisticated SPx peripherals.

SPice boards can be made either to plug "piggy back" directly onto the host SPLat board, or to connect via an extension cable. In general you can only use one SPice board at a time.