Incompatible Changes.

• MAY BE MORE - This release has major new features. Implementing the new features may have caused some imcompatibilities, This list is likely to grow as existing users report problems.
• queueRequest - Of the portDriver does not block then the aeeue callback is called by queueRequest rather than by a separate thread. User code can call canBlock to find out how the callback is called.
• registerPort - The argument multiDevice has been replaced by attributes. Attributes currently has two bits ASYN_MULTIDEVICE and ASYN_CANBLOCK. The port drived is responsible for setting both bits correctly.
• setOption/getOption have been moved from asynCommon to a new interface asynOption.

Major New Features

• Support for synchronous drivers.
• Support for register based drivers.
with register based drivers.
• Generic register based device support for EPICS records.
• Additional fields have been added to asynUser.
• Added pasynManager->memMalloc() and pasynManager->memFree() for allocating and freeing memory with a freelist. This is primarily meant to be used with pasynManager->duplicateAsynUser() and the new pasynUser->userData field.

asynDriver.h

The following changes have been made

• userData - this is a new field in asynUser.
• registerPort - Field multiDevice is replaced by attributes. Currently two attributes are defined: ASYN_MULTIDEVICE and ASYN_CANBLOCK.
• duplicateAsynUser - This is a new method that creates a new asynUser and initializes it with values from an existing asynUser. freeAsynUser now puts the asynUser of a free list rather than calling free.
• memMalloc/memFree - New methods that manage storage. It uses a set if free lists of different sizes.
• asynCommon no longer has methods setOption/getOption.
• asynOctet is now defined in a separate header file.

asynRecord

Removed the GOPT field. This is no longer necessary because the port options are automatically read whenever connecting to a port. "special" requests are now queued without changing the state of the record, using the new duplicateAsynUser, memMalloc(), and memFree() methods. This means that there is no longer a possibility of a special request being rejected because the record is busy. It is no longer possible to cancel a special request.

asynGpib

• asynGpibPort:srqStatus returns asynStatus
• asynGpibPort:serialPoll returns asynStatus. It now only calls a registered callback only if statusByte&0x40 is non zero.

devSupportGpib

• setEos is now a method.
• completeProcess is a new method. This was added to support synchronous drivers.
• Failures for GPIBREADW|GPIBEFASTIW were not handled properly. This could cause and assert failure. This is fixed.

drvAsynSerialPortFlush

Flushes input only.

asynInterposeEOS

The EOS read method now calls the low-level read method only once and returns as many characters as the low-level method supplies. This makes the EOS read semantics match those of the low-level serial and IP drivers.

drvVxi11

vxi11SetRpcTimeout - now handles fractions of a second properly

asynRecord

Two new fields have been added: GOPT (Get Options) and AQR (Abort Queue Reque st)

The semantics have been changed as follows: process is responsible for all and only for I/O operations. Only I/O operations cause the alarm status and severity to change. Special is responsible for all other operations performed by asynRecord.

Changed and obsolete features

• INCOMPATIBLE CHANGE -- The units of the respond2Writes field, if greater than 0, are now seconds rather than milliseconds. This change was made so that all time values set in the instrument support initialization routine are specified uniformly in units of seconds. Very few instrument support files are likely to be affected by this change
• The contents of asynRecDevDrv.dbd have been placed in asyn.dbd and asynRecDevDrv.dbd has been removed. This allows applications to get correct dbior reports and access to asynRecords by including any low-level driver .dbd file.
• The drvAsynTCPPort driver has been renamed drvAsynIPPort since it now supports both UDP and TCP protocols. The protocol is selected by adding a "UDP" or "TCP" after the "hostname:port" in the drvAsynIPPortConfigure command. A missing protocol is taken to be "TCP".
• Work around 'missing SPD' bug in HP E2050 GPIB/LAN adapter. SRQ handling is much more robust on all supported hardware.

Major New Features

• National Instruments NI1014 VME GPIB interface is now supported.
• GPIB - All low level GPIB support (vxi11, gsip488, and ni1014) now fully support the GPIB specific features defined by asynGpibDriver.h
• Implementation of asynTrace is more consistent across the low level drivers.
• Added makeSupport script and template instrument support. Updated tutorials to reflect these additions.

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.