ICC Protocol

Inter Card Cage protocol is the protocol used between the master and the slave modules in a AlphaCom MultiModule. The ICC protocol provides very low level control of the HW resources in a AlphaCom module.

Network and link layer

Uses a variant of Stentofon Data Link Layer as linklayer. The network layer is actually just 3 bits of the link layer header ( <Unused> / <Encoding type> bits), which is used to address the slave modules.

The original version used RS232 at 9600 bit/s (no parity, 8 bit data, one stop bit). The first slave (module no 66) forwards messages to the last slaves.

When running on IP the ICC protocol, with sliding window and everything, is put on top of TCP. The master connects TCP towards slaves, slaves are listening for connection on port 50010. There is direct TCP connection to all slaves, no router slave.

Parameter formats

See http://repository/repos/Products/AMC/design/AICE_doc/Converted%20from%20FrameMaker/icc_interface.pdf

Unit numbers

Unit numbers are used to refer to a audio channel on a SBI. In the ICC protocol unitnumbers are coded using one or two bytes. The bit layout of the variable “unit” parameter is:

Channel on first SBI, one byte like:

  bbbbbccc

and for channels on higher SBIs two bytes like

  00000sss  bbbbbccc

where

  bbbbb is board number 1 – 26
  sss is the SBI number within the board, 0 - 7
  ccc is channel 0 – 7 with one SBI