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Subject: Re: Advice on VME processor cards for EPICS
From: Till Straumann <[email protected]>
To: "TYLER, Paul" <[email protected]>
Cc: "EPICS (E-mail)" <[email protected]>
Date: Tue, 05 Nov 2002 21:14:01 -0800
TYLER, Paul wrote:
Hi.

I've been lurking for a while and reading up on EPICS but think it is time for a question.  We have
been using a home grown control system for our Tandem accelerator that has never really met user's
expectations.  I've been looking at various options to upgrade or redo our control system and
believe EPICS is a good choice for us.  Currently we have VME based hardware with MVME147 processor
cards.  I think it is a lost cause trying to utilise the MVME147s and for the cost of a VxWorks
licences for them, we can upgrade our cards and use a free O.S.

So I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions on CPU cards for (old) VME crates that might be
suitable for EPICS?  We are trying hard to avoid VxWorks due to the expense.  So that leaves us with
RTEMS or even just running IOCs under Linux.  Our current response times are measured in seconds so
while Linux isn't a "Real Time" OS and has some latency issues, it may well be quite ok.  (Any
comments about that are welcome.)  We don't need huge processing power either.  (We just cope with
the MVME147s.)


MVME147 is supported by RTEMS - although VME interrupts are currently not.


I can only encourage you to try RTEMS - it works very well. I have done
extensive testing and I am quite satisfied. At SSRL, we are using PowerPC boards (our board is a Synergy VGM series) but I do regular
tests on an MVME23xx.


On these types of boards, you have quite complete support for VME (including DMA, interrupts etc) and other hardware.

EPICS' "devLib" which is essentially a wrapper for VME
support is available for RTEMS-mvme23xx/svgm and it is very easy to
port (AKA "fourteenify") existing VME drivers. It usually takes me a day
or two to get something running on RTEMS (like the CAN bus support,
Joerger waveform digitizers etc.).

Also, on RTEMS you now have a runtime loader with the necessary
support for C++ to load an EPICS app into a running RTEMS system.
I am putting a release together just NOW.

OTOH there seems to be some interest at SLAC also to recycle mvme167s
under RTEMS - for myself it would be interesting in order to verify the portability of the loader but I have hardly any time.


So my major question and then a minor one.  Any suggestions on replacement VME processor cards with
Operating System options?  Price is a consideration.  We also have a preference for cards that can
run Linux and RTEMS.  Also is anyone running with Pentium based systems?

If you have any other comments, they would also be welcome.

Thanks in advance.

Paul Tyler




References:
Advice on VME processor cards for EPICS TYLER, Paul

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