Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Hi Rod,

 

FWIW, this is how the asyn device support handles .SHFT.

 

For the asynUInt32Digital interface:

 

static int computeShift(epicsUInt32 mask)

{

    epicsUInt32 bit=1;

    int i;

 

    for(i=0; i<32; i++, bit <<= 1 ) {

        if(mask&bit) break;

    }

    return i;

}

 

The initialization for mbbi, mbbo, mbbiDirect and mbboDirect records all do the following:

 

   pr->shft = computeShift(pPvt->mask);

 

The process functions for mbbo and mbboDirect do the following:

 

            if(pr->shft>0) rval >>= pr->shft;

 

 

For the asynInt32 interface it is handled differently.

 

In mbbi and mbbo initialization

 

    pr->mask <<= pr->shft;

 

 

In mbbo processing:

 

            if(pr->shft>0) rval >>= pr->shft;

 

 

So for devAsynUInt32Digital it is computing SHFT from MASK, while for asynInt32 it is computing MASK from SHFT.  I am not sure of the logic behind this, but it was written by Marty Kraimer 13 years ago, and he usually got things right!

 

Mark

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Rod Nussbaumer
Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2017 4:22 PM
To: epics Techtalk
Subject: mbboDirect record and SHFT field

 

We're looking at device support written by a vendor, and there is a

database template that includes in a mbboDirect record with the .SHFT

field given a value in the EPICS runtime db. Since our database

configuration tool, tdct, doesn't provide for creating a DB with the

SHFT field set for that particular record type, I started looking...

 

In the record reference manual for 3-14 record reference manual, it says

"the SHFT value is set by device support and is not configurable by the

user". The information in the accompanying table supports this,

indicating in the 'DCT' field of the table 'NO' for the SHFT field of

the record type.

 

In the R3.14.12.3 dbd file for the mbboDirect, there exists the entry

"promptgroup(GUI_MBB)", suggesting that a database configuration tool

should be allowed to set the SHFT field. When the database is loaded on

an IOC, and the SHFT field has been initialized at dbLoadRecords time,

the field behaves as one might expect for that circumstance.

 

Is that the intended behavior, and the docs are out of sync, or the

other way around?

 

If the SHFT field should really only be set by device support, is there

a strong convention for that? The method I recall is to infer from a

bitmask supplied in the .OUT field, by counting the number of clear

least significant bits. Are there other conventions or preferences?

 

Rod Nussbaumer

Group Leader, Controls

TRIUMF

Vancouver, Canada