The 7I96S is a Ethernet connected motion control interface designed for interfacing  up to 5 Axis of step&dir step motor or servo motor drives. Step rates up to 10 MHz are supported. The 7I96S also has 11 isolated inputs plus 6 isolated outputs for general purpose I/O use. A high speed encoder interface is provided for spindle synchronized motion and an isolated analog spindle output allows spindle speed control . A RS-422/RS485 serial port  and a parallel port are provided for I/O expansion .

All step and direction outputs are buffered 5V signals that can drive 24 mA.  All outputs support differential mode to reduce susceptibility to noise.  The spindle encoder can be used with TTL or differential input.

11 isolated inputs provided for general control use including limit switch and control panel inputs. Inputs operate with 3V to 36V DC and can have a positive or negative common for sourcing or sinking input applications. Four 36V 2A isolated outputs and 2 high isolation 36V 100 mA outputs  allow sinking, sourcing  or combinations of both output types.

One  RS-422/RS-485 interface is provided for I/O expansion via a serial I/O daughtercard.  In addition to the on card I/O, A FPGA expansion connector compatible with Mesa's 25 pin daughtercards or standard parallel port breakout boards allow almost unlimited I/O options including additional quadrature or absolute encoder inputs, step/dir or PWM/dir outputs, and field I/O expansion to hundreds of I/O of points.  All field wiring is terminated in pluggable 3.5 mm screw terminal blocks.

Main advantage in relation to 7i96:

With analog spindle output

Larger FPGA (might be useful for non standard configurations)

Main disadvantage in relation to 7i96:

More expensive