Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

[email protected] (Jeff Hill) · Fri, 17 Sep 1999 13:24:21 -0600

> We are planning to test PPC mv2302 in VXI crate with a VXI/VME adaptor.
> I was wondering whether we can use the VXI Resource Manager and the VXI
> message based device interface in EPICS in this embedded processor.
>
> I looked at the code briefly, and found that it was for MXI bus extenders.
> Is there anybody already port this library to an embedded processor?
>
> We want to test mv2302 with a message based device (like tek
> TVS625 waveform
> analyzer) in VXI crate.
>

The resource manager does work with VXI resident "embedded" slot zero
controller single board computers. The code expects that the register map
for the processor in VME A16 is visible to the processor. This was not the
case with the NICPU030, or at least the alternate location of the registers
was undocumented, so the nivxi library from NI was used to access the
functionality in these hidden registers.

The VXI resource manager has been used in the following configurations:
o generic VME CPU accessing VXI through the MXI bus
o National Instruments CPU030 VXI slot zero controller
o Kinetic Systems VXI slot zero controller

Attempts here to use the NI PCVXI VXI slot zero controller board were
abandoned
because of bugs in the NIVXI library and exceptionally long interrupt
latencies.

No doubt that improvements could be made in the structure of the software so
that
all processor specific code is in a separate files which are accessed
through a
software interface.

If I was interfacing with a VXI byte serial (message based) device today I
would probably
create a vxWorks serial driver for it (basing this driver on the code
already
written in drvEpvxuiMsg.c) and then attach it to EPICS using drvSerial.c and
probably
also devAscii.c.

Jeff Hill

______________________________________________
Jeffrey O. Hill         E-mail [email protected]
LANL MS H820            Voice  505 665 1831
Los Alamos NM 87545 USA FAX    505 665 5107

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System