DAQserver - Data acquisition control program and library

The DAQserver  consists actually of two entities: A subroutine library (for use with any compiled program) and a server program, which uses this library to allow interactive and client/server applications.

Features of the DAQserver library:

• Runs on Linux (currently libc5* based systems with 2.0.* kernel)
• Access to all data acquisition functions of an S-Link / FEMCTRL based system
• Fast Direct Memory Access (DMA) transfer to memory for maximum acquisition speed
• Uses bigphysarea reservation of arbitrarily large DMA buffers
• Uses user-space mapped Autobahn device driver (modified version for large DMA blocks > 64 MB)
• Full control of  the AMCC S5933 ("Matchmaker") PCI bus interface chip
• Supports the  SLink-to-PCI board (ROMB): Data word, control word and test pattern transfer
• Full control of link return lines
• Tested with ES-Link and FCS-Link card sets. Other S-Link systems are likely to work without modification
• Supports FEMCTRL functions: remote setting of system clock, external input enable, internal/external clock reference, reset, arm, start, linktest functions
• Free programming of FEMCTRL's external serial interface lines
• High level functions for FEMADC control in preparation
• Provided with source code to allow easy modification
• Easy extension for user-specific acquisition and control functions
• Simple oscilloscope demonstration program included

Features of the DAQserver program:

• Command interpreter for data acquisition functions
• Uses DAQserver library for all data acquisition and control functions. One-to-one correspondence of most library routines and DAQserver commands
• Built-in command-line editor for interactive use
• Commands can be executed from script files
• Commands can be given as command-line arguments, which is useful for embedding into shell scripts
• TCP/IP server mode. Accepts multiple simultaneous connections to a user-defined IP socket. In this mode, only the raw data buffer is shared between sessions which are otherwise fully independent.

Status

Download

Older versions:
Versions <= 0.2  need libc5,  bigphysarea-patch  installed and use the Autobahn device driver (below).

Version  0.1:  2.0.* kernel. libc5, bzip2 file compression femdaq-0.1-alpha.tar.gz
Version  0.2:  2.2.* kernel, Huffman-coding of result files: femdaq-0.2.tar.gz

`AutoBahn' driver  module:
A Linux kernel module driver for the S5933 ('Matchmaker') chip, originally written by Andrea Cisternino (for CERN).  The driver is quite generic and can in fact be used for many S5933-based boards. The code allows to run with very little CPU overhead and is very flexible to use by application programs. It supports mapping of all S5933 registers into user space. I/O is done by DMA into bigphysarea-reserved space, which is also mapped into user space. No data needs to be copied. (No write() or read() calls are supported, in fact). I modified the driver to support DMA transfers >64MBytes at a time (DMA setup by short latency interrupt handler).  Porting to 2.2.* is on-going (alpha-version available).

The original version by Andrea Cisternino (acister@pcape1.pi.infn.it) is contained in the femdaq-0.2 package.
Large DMA version for 2.0.36 kernels:  autobahn-0.1.tgz (quite stable)
Development version for 2.2.13 and 2.0.36 kernels:  autobahn-0.2.tgz

My computer notes on installing bigphysarea patch and femdaq may perhaps be helpful.

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