Cost Effective Input Circuitry for Texas Instruments TMS370 Microcontroller Family

Severe voltage transient conditions and widely varying battery voltage levels place a premium on designing input protection and signal conditioning circuitry for microcontroller based systems. Various circuits have been implemented to provide the required robust designs. However, the costs associated with implementing some of these protection and conditioning circuits can excessively drive up system costs. Using TMS370 microcontrollers designed with internal diode protection circuitry and TTL specified logic levels allow designers to implement simple low cost input circuitry thus greatly reducing the total system cost.