Message Passing Facility
Industry Pack Support

Release Notes
April 2003

Release 1-10

DevMpf has a new method bind, which must be called immediately after any object derived from class DevMpf is created. This binds to the MPF server. Since binding may result in virtual class methods being called, binding MUST be done after construction. Thus it is not possible to bind in the constructor for DevMpf.

RMRServer - byte order bug fixed. If client and server have different byte orders RMRServer did not work. This is fixed.

semMCreate instead of semBCreate

Some lock semaphores were using semBCreate instead of semMCreate. This is fixed.

Release 1-9

MPF is now released with the new APS open source license

Release 1-8

DevMpf now allows sending messages to the server during init_record.

DLList was changed from a semBCreate to a semMCreate.

Stack size for watchDog task was increased.

The message print methods no longer use a separate line for each field.

Release 1-7

The constructor for DevMpf.cc was returning "this". Consteructors are not supposed to return anything.

Tcp.cc now checks for a message larger than the buffer size.

StandardFieldsMessage now allows units for timeout. Allowed units are timeoutUnitsSeconds and timeoutUnitsMilliseconds.

WatchDog now provides a start method with a delay of type double.

Release 1-6

The config files have been changed to use the base 3.13.3 makeBaseApp rules. This method also works for earlier release of base.

Stack Overflow may occur for PowerPC. This problem was fixed by change the stack size in the calls to taskSpawn in the following files: RMRClient.cc, RMRServer.cc, andTcp.cc.

DevMpf previously issued an error message and returned without calling startIO is PACT is true and no replyMessage is present. This check is no longer made. This allows the creation of device support that has to process several messages before a record completes processing.

Release 1-5

All device specific code has been unbundled from MPF itself except the ip carrier support.

DevMpf changed to properly handle connects during ioc initialization.

NOTE: The following actuallly refer to the unbundled support.

The serial test (startEpicsSerial) has been changed so records are event scanned and so that scan rate of all records can be changed from a single control that appears at the top of the adl screen.

OctalUARTPort::read has been changed to lock interrupts while calling startIoTimeout.

serialServer should now properly handle circularBuffer mode .

Changes have been made to OctalUART to handle soft reboots.

Release 1-4

The major changes have been to DevMpf and to serialServer. Thanks to input from Mark Rivers both of these should be much more useful. Read the new version of the manual for details.

Release 1-3

This is the first release that follows a regular releases numbering scheme. Since the last release the following major changes have occured.

The IndustryPackMVME162 support is no longer supplied with mpf. Instead mpf uses the drvIpac support. This provides access to sevel "dumb" greensprings IP carriers in addition to the mv162/mv172 support.
The gpib support has the following major changes
- Accesses to the TMS9914A chip are throttled. On the 172 random failures occured because the chip missed commands. It is thought that similar missed commands occur on the mv162 but less frequently.
- gpibSniff is a new facility that displays all transfers to/from a particular gpib device for a specified number of seconds
Several ip components were changed to use short rather than char to access registers. This prevents future "endian" problems.
In the APS CVS repository mpf has been moved from epics/unbundled to epics/modules/bus

The following changes are necessary to convert existing mpf applications:

In command files and startup files remove all references to IndustryPackMVME162.o
In startup files the command

initIndustryPackMVME162("ipMV162",0xe0000000)

must be replaced by

ipacAddCarrier(&ipmv162,"A:l=3,3 m=0xe0000000,64;B:l=3,3 m=0xe0010000,64")
initIpacCarrier("ipMV162", 0)

Message Passing Facility Industry Pack Support

Release Notes April 2003