[AG-TECH] New Gentner Software

[Bob Olson]

That would be a great thing if someone wanted to do it. It's not hard,
just a fairly large amount of detail to cope with to get it useful &
right. There are other reasons for doing just htat, including enabling hte
creation of a unified control panel application.

--bob

On Thu, 26 Jul 2001, Jay Beavers wrote:

> Ya know, all the Gentner software is doing is sending a series of text
> commands through a serial port.
> 
> With all the inconveniences we keep seeing with the software (OS
> incompatibility, CPU utilization, UI overload), I wonder if it might be
> useful to clearly articulate exactly what it is we need the software to
> do and then use a simple UI program developed in spec with the very well
> documented serial protocol to create an AG specific Gentner control
> program.
> 
>  - jcb
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Olson [mailto:olson at mcs.anl.gov] 
> Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 9:28 AM
> To: Bill Nickless
> Cc: Mustafa Varank; ag-tech at mcs.anl.gov
> Subject: Re: [AG-TECH] New Gentner Software
> 
> 
> I also did a brief test of manually changing hte priority from the task 
> mgr. Didn't seem to have an effect on the operation of the gentner 
> software. Haven't tried with the ag video up.
> 
> Still worry about function overload on the display machine console...
> 
> --bob
> 
> At 11:24 AM 7/23/2001 -0500, Bill Nickless wrote:
> >At 10:50 AM 7/23/2001 -0500, Robert Olson wrote:
> >>NOte that both Gware and APware will consume 100% cpu even in an idle
> >>state. We've not tested yet to see if this has a bad effect on other 
> >>things happening on the display box, but it seems it can't be good. 
> >>Current thinking is to perhaps move to Win2k on the control machine,
> so 
> >>we can run other network services there as well.
> >
> >The good news about Windows 2000 is that you can set the process 
> >priority
> >of an application at start time.  I've had very good success running 
> >things like MP3 encoders at LOW (IDLE) priority and continuing to do
> other 
> >things on the system.
> >
> >This should work really well on a display machine with two
> >processors.  Last I heard, vic wasn't multithreaded so could only
> saturate 
> >one processor.
> >
> >Here are the details on the start command:
> >
> >C:\>start /?
> >Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.
> >
> >START ["title"] [/Dpath] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
> >       [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL |
> /BELOWNORMAL]
> >       [/WAIT] [/B] [command/program]
> >       [parameters]
> >
> >     "title"     Title to display in  window title bar.
> >     path        Starting directory
> >     B           Start application without creating a new window. The
> >                 application has ^C handling ignored. Unless the
> application
> >                 enables ^C processing, ^Break is the only way to
> interrupt
> >                 the application
> >     I           The new environment will be the original environment
> passed
> >                 to the cmd.exe and not the current environment.
> >     MIN         Start window minimized
> >     MAX         Start window maximized
> >     SEPARATE    Start 16-bit Windows program in separate memory space
> >     SHARED      Start 16-bit Windows program in shared memory space
> >     LOW         Start application in the IDLE priority class
> >     NORMAL      Start application in the NORMAL priority class
> >     HIGH        Start application in the HIGH priority class
> >     REALTIME    Start application in the REALTIME priority class
> >     ABOVENORMAL Start application in the ABOVENORMAL priority class
> >     BELOWNORMAL Start application in the BELOWNORMAL priority class
> >     WAIT        Start application and wait for it to terminate
> >     command/program
> >                 If it is an internal cmd command or a batch file then
> >                 the command processor is run with the /K switch to
> cmd.exe.
> >                 This means that the window will remain after the
> command
> >                 has been run.
> >
> >                 If it is not an internal cmd command or batch file
> then
> >                 it is a program and will run as either a windowed
> application
> >                 or a console application.
> >
> >     parameters  These are the parameters passed to the command/program
> >
> >
> >If Command Extensions are enabled, external command invocation through 
> >the command line or the START command changes as follows:
> >
> >non-executable files may be invoked through their file association just
> >     by typing the name of the file as a command.  (e.g.  WORD.DOC
> would
> >     launch the application associated with the .DOC file extension).
> >     See the ASSOC and FTYPE commands for how to create these
> >     associations from within a command script.
> >
> >When executing an application that is a 32-bit GUI application, CMD.EXE
> >     does not wait for the application to terminate before returning to
> >     the command prompt.  This new behavior does NOT occur if executing
> >     within a command script.
> >
> >When executing a command line whose first token is the string "CMD "
> >     without an extension or path qualifier, then "CMD" is replaced
> with
> >     the value of the COMSPEC variable.  This prevents picking up
> CMD.EXE
> >     from the current directory.
> >
> >When executing a command line whose first token does NOT contain an
> >     extension, then CMD.EXE uses the value of the PATHEXT
> >     environment variable to determine which extensions to look for
> >     and in what order.  The default value for the PATHEXT variable
> >     is:
> >
> >         .COM;.EXE;.BAT;.CMD
> >
> >     Notice the syntax is the same as the PATH variable, with
> >     semicolons separating the different elements.
> >
> >When searching for an executable, if there is no match on any 
> >extension, then looks to see if the name matches a directory name.  If 
> >it does, the START command launches the Explorer on that path.  If done
> 
> >from the command line, it is the equivalent to doing a CD /D to that 
> >path.
> >
> >
> >===
> >Bill Nickless    http://www.mcs.anl.gov/people/nickless      +1 630 252
> 7390
> >PGP:0E 0F 16 80 C5 B1 69 52 E1 44 1A A5 0E 1B 74 F7
> nickless at mcs.anl.gov
> 
>