The IC66* Bus Controller (GBC/NBC) is available as a single channel controller. It occupies a single IC66* PLC slot. The bus controller is configured by the MSDOS or Windows programming software configurator function. IC66* Input/Output blocks are scanned asynchronously by the bus controller and I/O data is transferred to the CPU once per scan over the backplane of the IC697 PLC rack. The bus controller also supports directed communications initiated by a PLC CPU Communication Service Request. In addition, it may be configured to perform global communications. Faults reported by the bus controller are managed by the PLC Alarm Processor Function which time stamps and queues faults in a table. For applications requiring peer to peer information transfer, the Bus Controller can serve as a communications node linking other devices (Bus Controllers, PCIMs, and other IC66* devices) via the IC66* bus. Such a network can provide communications between multiple PLCs and host computers. These communications include transmitting global data from one CPU to another. The global data area is identified by MS-DOS or Windows configuration. After initialization, the specified data area is transferred between devices automatically and repetitively.