[AG-TECH] New Gentner Software

[Jay Beavers]

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