dixon@sagittarius.crd.ge.com (walt dixon) (01/10/90)
I'm in the process of configuring a pc based development system. Our
target application acquires data at fairly high speed (~100-200K 12 bit
samples/sec) and needs to display large (1024x768x256) images. We're
also controlling some equipment (both closed and open loop). We'll
probably off load the data acquisition to an intelligent a/d converter,
and are looking for intelligent boards for equipment control. There
are still some events that we must be able to respond to in a timely
fashion.
We most likely will be doing our development under some version of Windows.
There appear to be three Windows options, windows 2.xx, windows/386,
and windows 3.0. As far as I know, windows 3.0 is still in beta test,
but people seem to like it a lot. Given the need to manipulate large
images and interrupt response constraints, is one of these versions
better than the others? As far as I can tell neither windows 2.xx nor
windows 386 is wonderful when it comes to dealing with large memory blocks.
What about windows 3.0? How do these versions of windows affect
interrupt latency? How hard would it be to start development in one
of the released versions of windows and port to windows 3.0 given our
constraints? Should we be thinking about OS2 PM instead? (This
alternative is not out of the question, but would only be considered
as a last resort). Has anyone used a dos extender in conjunction with
windows? Which one? How hard was it to get the extender and windows
to coexist?
The other part of my question deals with hardware. What has been people's
experience with fast, high resoloution (1024x768), color (256) VGA
adapters? Do these adapters have windows drivers? What monitors are
good for use with these adapters?
I'm also looking for recommendations on hardware assisted debuggers. I've
talked to both Atron (Probe/386) and Periscope. Has any one had experience
with any other vendor's hardware? Has anyone had experience with either
of these two vendors? The debugger must be capable of dealing with
complex break points (break on write to port, write in or out of address
range, etc), have a reasonable size trace buffer, be suitable for
debugging device drivers and isr's, and run with some version of
windows (ie can follow code segments around). It would be nice to be
able to break on dma access, but this capability is not an absolute
requirment.
Finally, I'm looking for recommendations for a 386 machine to use in
this environment. The hardware assisted debugger will limit clock speed.
The Atron board works up to 20 mHz and the Periscope board maxes out at
25mHz. Both vendors indicate that they have problems with a few
manufacturers (not suprisingly, the same ones). These hardware assisted
debuggers need access to the CPU. The processor is difficult to get to
in some systems. Has any one had any experience positive or otherwise
using either of these boards in a 386. Has anyone had any experience with
systems where the clock rate could be dropped from 33 to 20 mHz?
Please reply directly to me and I will summarize for the net. If you
don't want your name used in the summary or don't want your reply included
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them.
Thanks for your time.
Walt Dixon {arpa: dixon@crd.ge.com }
{us mail: ge crd }
{ po box 8 }
{ schenectady, ny 12345 }
{voice: 518-387-5798 }
Walt Dixon dixon@crd.ge.com