Motor Record: Known problems with Release 6-5

1. Aerotech Ensemble

   • With previous releases the Aerotech Ensemble asyn motor driver would crash the IOC at boot-up if the Ensemble was not powered up and able to communicate. Fixed with R6-5-1.
   • The EOT limit switch status was not available except via an Ensemble fault condition. With release R6-5-1 the status of the EOT limit switches are always available.

2. OMS MAXv WatchDog Timeout Counter

   Beginning with R6-5-1 and OMS MAXv firmware ver:1.33, the EPICS MAXv driver reads the MAXv's Watchdog Timeout Counter at bootup, and with every motor status update. If the Counter is nonzero, an error message is sent to both the errlog task and the console. Since a watchdog timer trip indicates that the MAXv has rebooted and no longer has valid motor positions, the driver disables the controller. That specific controller is no longer available to EPICS until after the VME crate has been power cycled. Other MAXv boards in the system are unaffected by this scenario.

   To better communicate this problem to the user, several medm displays have been changed. Small displays (motorx_tiny.adl, motorx.adl) will show a yellow border around their position readback values. Larger displays (motorx_more.adl, motorx_all.adl) will display the message "Controller Error" in yellow. The following error message at the console and/or in the errlog is definitive;

   ***MAXv card #(card#) Disabled*** Watchdog Timeout CTR =(count)

3. spec upgrade required

   The RES field was removed from the motor record with R6-5. Since earlier versions of Certified Scientific Software's spec used the RES field, an upgrade to spec version 5.8.06-6 or above is required for spec to work with motor record R6-5 and above. The problem of using earlier versions of spec with motor record R6-5 exhibits itself by spec setting the "responsive" parameter to zero and not allowing any motor motion.

4. VxWorks 6.x compiler error

   The GNU preprocessor assertions in motor.h are deprecated with the VxWorks 6.x compiler. Test for CPU macros that are compatible with VxWorks 6.x have been added. This change prevents an "Error: unknown bit order!" compiler error with VxWorks 6.x. This problem is fixed with R6-5-2 and above. Alternatively, you can replace <motor>/motorApp/MotorSrc/motor.h with the following copy: motor.h

5. Aerotech Ensemble Home Search

   The EPICS Ensemble driver uses Aerotech's ASCII communication protocol. That protocol blocks all communication on the ASCII comm. port during a home search. Consequently, once a home search is started from EPICS, it is unable to stop it. As a result, beginning with R6-5-2, the home search command has been commented out of the EPICS driver until an Ensemble firmware update resolves this problem.