Major New Features

Changed and obsolete features

• The drvGenericSerial driver has been split into drvAsynSerialPort and drvAsynTCPPort drivers for local and remote serial ports, respectively. End-of-string processing has been moved to an interposed interface.
• The diagnostic facilities previously provided by asynTrace.db have been replaced with the much more general asynRecord.db
• All asynManager,asynCommon, and asynOctet methods except report now return asynStatus. Methods that previously returned a different value now have an additional argument for this value.
• Low-level driver read and write methods now return asynStatus and are passed an additional argument through which they store the actual number of characters read or written.
• The createSocket method in the asynSyncIO interface has been replaced by openSocket.  openSocket does not call asynSyncIO->connect(), that must now be done by the caller.
• Removed code for "flush" from gpib drivers.  The implementation caused infinite loops on devices that speak when not spoken to.
• asynRecord
  • asynOctetRecord has been renamed to asynRecord
  • TIOM, TMSK, TSIZ, TFIL, AUCT, ENBL, CNCT, ERRS, TINP, NAWT fields have been added
  • Default values of OMAX and IMAX decreased from 512 to 80
  • Options that are unknown for a device (e.g. baud on a Moxa terminal server) are shown as Unknown.
  • Many bug fixes and improvements in logic and functionality

Major New Features

• Connection Management - A framework for connection management is provided. It provides the ability to connect/disconnect to/from a port or port,addr. It also provides enable/disable and autoConnect/noAutoConnect. See the asynDriver for details.
• devAsyn - Generic device support for connect management for a specific device.
• devAsynGeneric - Generic support for connection management and traceing. This support dynamically attaches to a port,addr. Thus one set of records and one medm display can be used for all devices connected to an ioc.
• asynOctetRecord - A generic record and medm display that allows interactive access to many asynDriver features.
• asynSyncIO - A synchronous interface to asynDriver. This can be used by code, e.g. SNC programs, that are willing to wait instead of following an asynchronous model.

Changed and obsolete features

• devAsynTrace is replaced by devAsyn and devAsynGeneric.
• asynManager.h
  • disconnectDevice has been renamed to disconnect.
  • The interface to low level drivers has been drastically modified in order to support the new connection management features. See the asynDriver documentation for details.
• asynGpib
  • registerPort has additional arguments multiDevice and autoConnect.
  • setPortOption,getPortOption are setOption,getOption

• Promote VXI-11 RPC definition files to vxi11 directory. Use rpcgen to build RPC support files for targets for which this is possible.
• Run rpcgen on Solaris with 'multi-thread' flag.
• Use separate GPIB message/response buffer for each port instance.
• Use sscanf to convert GPIB stringin response.
• Fix race condition in GPIB finish routines.

This release includes support for the following:

• asynTrace - A trace facility is now implemented.
• gsIP488 - The Greensprings Industry Pack IP488 is now supported

Modifications include:

1. Added asynSetPortOption and asynGetPortOption to manipulate port options.
2. Changed serial support to use asynSetPortOption/asynGetPortOption.
3. Added devGPIB GPIBCVTIO commmand type to allow custom conversion routine to perform all I/O operations.
4. Changed rules for return value from devGPIB custom conversion routines.
5. Added dbior support.
6. Changed devGPIB to no longer cache EOS.

Support Provided in addition to asynDriver and asynGpib

• devGpib - The Winans/Franksen gpib device support.
• vxi11 - Support for instruments that support the VXI-11 standard.
• drvGenericSerial - Support for devices connected to serial ports or to Ethernet/Serial converter.

Future Support

• Other device support methods especially streams, devSerial, and mpfSerial.
• NI1014 VME Gpib driver.
• Industry Pack IP488 Gpib driver.
• Successor to GI (GPIB Interact).

Testing

The vxi11 support has been tested on the following platforms: Solaris, Linux (redhat 9), Darwin, Windows XP (Cygwin), and vxWorks. It has been tested with the following vxi11 controllers:

• Agilent E2050A LAN/GPIB Gateway.

  It's vxiName must start with "hpib" rather than "gpib".

• Agilent E5810A LAN/GPIB Gateway.
• Tektronix TDS3014B Scope.

  When communicating with the Ethernet port it acts like a VXI-11.2 rather than a VXI-11.3 device. It seems to just accept any GPIB address. SRQs did not work when connecting via the ethernet port but did when communicating via a LAN/GPIB gateway.

The generic serial support has been tested with the following:

• xvWorks with a GreenSprings Octal UART Industry-Pack module on a VME carrier.
• Linux and Windows XP (Cygwin) with PC hardware serial port (/dev/ttyS0).
• Solaris hardware serial port (/dev/cua/a).
• Linux, Solaris, Darwin, vxWorks, and Windows XP (Cygwin) with a Moxa NPort Ethernet/Serial converter.