Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

"Mark Rivers" <[email protected]> · Wed, 23 Feb 2011 13:48:21 -0600

Hi Rod,

The IFACE field of the asyn record controls which asyn interface the
asyn record tries to use when it does actual I/O.  Most frequently the
asyn record is used with the asynOctet interface, but it can also be
used with asynInt32, asynFloat64, etc.

Are you talking about GUI tools like medm?  If so, they definitely don't
require the promptgroup(GUI_DISPLAY) for the IFACE field in the DBD
file.  You can see that from the documentation for the asynRecord:

http://www.aps.anl.gov/epics/modules/soft/asyn/R4-16/asynRecord.html

It contains medm screen shots that include the IFACE menu, which works
fine.

I don't know what the meaning of promptgroup(GUI_DISPLAY) is.  Is it
documented anywhere?  Does capfast use that to know that it should
display it as a menu or something?

It is certainly not needed in the record definition in the IOC.  The
only thing the IOC needs to know is that the field is of type DBF_MENU.

Mark

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Rod Nussbaumer
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2011 12:28 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Asyn record DBD

Hi all.

I response to the recent discussion of the asyn record for invoking IOC 
shell commands, I have tried to set up a Capfast configuration for the 
asyn record. To do this, I have inspected the asyn record DBD file, and 
am extracting the crucial bits to a Capfast symbol file and to the 
edb.def file used in the Capfast -> EPICS .db file conversion. In the 
DBD file, I see the following snippet:

     field(IFACE,DBF_MENU) {
         prompt("Interface")
         menu(asynINTERFACE)
         special(SPC_MOD)
     }
Since I haven't yet come to a good understanding of the behavior of the 
asyn record, I cannot say for sure, but it seems to me that the record's

interface method is a vital configuration issue, and that GUI tools can 
only use the IFACE field's configuration if there is also the

	        promptgroup(GUI_DISPLAY)

element added to the DBD file for the IFACE field description.

Is this correct, or do I simply not understand the record and/or the 
meaning of the DBD file elements?

Thanks,

Rod Nussbaumer
ISAC Controls, TRIUMF
Vancouver, Canada.

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System