Montreal, CANADA February 11, 2005 -- Hardent is pleased to announce that its Optical PC/104 ISA bus eXtender is now available. The OPIX offers a completely transparent way of interconnecting a standard PC/104 CPU card and one or more remotely-located I/O cards using optical fiber. This permits the I/O card(s) to be located away from the CPU card (up to 2km), without requiring any modifications to the existing software or hardware. The use of an optical link with a high-speed protocol (patent pending) provides complete electrical isolation while allowing continuous fault detection from both ends.

Although targeted at industrial sensing and control applications, the OPIX lends itself well to any application where remotely locating part of the PC/104 stack would be advantageous. For non-ISA applications, bus adaptation cards in conjunction with an OPIX pair can be used to connect a remote PC/104 stack to a PCI or cPCI system for low bandwidth applications.

A development kit including two OPIX cards, configuration software, cables and a year of technical support has been packaged for the benefit of first-time users of the OPIX solution.

About Hardent
Hardent is a privately held international engineering firm headquartered in Montreal, Canada and with an office in France. Hardent's mission is to help its clients focus on their core competencies by providing them with the best electronic solutions possible.

For more information on the OPIX (and other products available from Hardent), please visit: http://www.hardent.com/products