Stephen, It depends more on whether the driver can take the load resistors going to ground, or where ever you decide to connect them. Do you have control of the design of the driver so that if you decide to so connect them it will work with any driver? I know of one major company that thought the phrase 'receivers shall be AC coupled' didn't include the terminating resistors, they DC coupled the terminators and then AC coupled them to the receiver. The PECL (I think) driver objected! From the fact that you say your proposed device terminates with 75 ohm I'd take a bet that it's a Fibre Channel device, if so, and you're using the corresponding FC driver it will not like the terminating resistor being DC coupled.to its output. You might also find that if the receiver is expecting to be AC coupled it also will probably not expect to have it's input bias voltage being upset by you connecting a resistor to ground. The upshot could be that you will have to use caps in series with the line to keep the driver happy and and also have caps in series with the external terminators to keep the receiver happy. In the case where your terminator consists of a series resistor and cap put the cap at the cold end, it better isolates the package parasitic capacitance. On the other hand, practical experience tells me that for an internal 1Gbd Fibre channel link you can ignore the fact that you would be terminating that 50 ohm line with 75 ohms and forget your external 150. It pretty much works for 2 Gbd FC as well if you have control of both ends of the link. Regards Dave Stephen Greenhalgh wrote: > When ac coupling into a receiving device at the end of a (differential) > transmission line, I have generally put the termination resistors first, then > through the capacitors into the IC. Nowadays many receiving devices have > built-in resistors, so the terminations are after the coupling capacitors. I > realise that larger capacitor values are then required to handle the lower > frequencies. Apart from this, are there any other issues to consider? For > example, as regards reflections, does the position of the termination (before > or after the coupling capacitors) make any difference? > In particular, I want to connect from a 100 ohm (differential) transmission > line into a device having inputs each of which is characterized as 75 ohm. If > I connect 150 ohm in parallel with each input, this should correctly > terminate the line. But should I place these 150 ohm resistors before or > after the coupling capacitors? Any opinions or insights are welcome. > > Thanks, > Stephen Greenhalgh > > -- Binary/unsupported file stripped by Ecartis -- -- Type: text/x-vcard -- File: dave.instone.vcf ------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe from si-list: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'unsubscribe' in the Subject field or to administer your membership from a web page, go to: //www.freelists.org/webpage/si-list For help: si-list-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with 'help' in the Subject field List FAQ wiki page is located at: http://si-list.org/wiki/wiki.pl?Si-List_FAQ List technical documents are available at: http://www.si-list.org List archives are viewable at: //www.freelists.org/archives/si-list or at our remote archives: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/si-list/messages Old (prior to June 6, 2001) list archives are viewable at: http://www.qsl.net/wb6tpu