Re: Using subArray

[Michael Abbott <michael.abbott@diamond.ac.uk>]

On Mon, 28 Nov 2005, Carl Lionberger wrote:

> The thought was that the subarray record would be purely a soft record, 
> and any hardware device support would be for waveform records that the 
> subarray would read from.  The MALM code makes sense in this context 
> because the API for the dbaccess (as Noburu alluded to) always starts at 
> element 0 of the source record.  Therefore it is impossible to index an 
> element larger than the buffer space you have.
>
> You might consider writing a device support suite which supports a 
> waveform record of the length you want and a couple of ao or longout 
> records which control the index and length of the reference into the 
> hardware..

Sure, I did think of that, and if the subArray gives me trouble then I'll 
revert back to that option.  I still think the subArray might be smoother, 
despite the slight impedance mismatch on the interfaces.  Have to confess 
before I opened the box I thought that's what the subArray was for!

It's true that to work in the way I'm thinking the subArray really needs 
to know *two* pieces of information in place of MALM: its own maximum 
length, and the maximum index into the stored array.