Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Michael Davidsaver <[email protected]> · Mon, 16 Oct 2017 08:13:28 -0500

On 10/16/2017 05:45 AM, Wang, Lin wrote:
> 
> Hello Michael,
> 
> I have two questions about this new release.
> 
> 1. Does it support (fully, partly or not) the MRF VME-EVM-300 and VME-EVR-300 (which are not in the supported hardware list yet)? If not, is there any fork of mrfioc2 that can support them?

No.  I didn't have access to the 300-series VME hardware.  That said,
supporting the VME-EVR-300 is probably as simple as adding to the ID
list.  The EVM is more complicated.

As you may be hinting, the PSI fork of mrfioc2 has supported these two
devices for some time.

> 2. Is it already perfectly compatible with VxWorks (say VxWorks 6.8)? I remember it was not fully tested or guaranteed to work properly on VxWorks a couple of years ago.

My personal testing with vxWorks is limited to build tests via APS
Jenkins (Thanks to Andrew).  These succeed.

https://jenkins.aps.anl.gov/job/epics-3.15-mrfioc2/lastBuild/console

I don't have access to any vxWorks systems, so it is not possible for me
to do this testing myself.  Any test results which you, or others, can
provide would be helpful.

> I ask because my colleagues planned to build a timing system prototype using the MRF VME-EVM-300 and VME-EVR-300 for our HEPS (High Energy Photon Source) project. We are now evaluating the operating system and the EPICS driver for it, and VxWorks is still our preference.

Do you have some specific requirement driving the use of vxWorks/VME, or
is this a matter of familiarity and experience?  To me, Linux is a much
more forgiving environment than RTEMS/vxWorks.  I've found non-RT Linux
to be more than capable of meeting the 10ms cycle deadline of FRIB.  PSI
reported a similar experience with RT Linux at the last week.

> Any suggestion is appreciated.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Lin
>  
> 
> 
>> -----Original Messages-----
>> From: "Michael Davidsaver" <[email protected]>
>> Sent Time: 2017-10-09 18:22:54 (Monday)
>> To: "EPICS Tech-Talk" <[email protected]>
>> Cc: 
>> Subject: mrfioc2 release 2.2.0
>>
>> Version 2.2.0 of the mrfioc2 driver for MRF timing cards is now available.
>>
>> This release adds support for newer 300 series PCI devices.  Some
>> incompatible changes have been made since the previous 2.1.0 release.
>> The minimum required versions of Base and devlib2 have been updated.
>> See the supported hardware list and change log for details.
>>
>> http://epics.sourceforge.net/mrfioc2/
>>
> 

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System