Supported Hardware

Over the last 20 years, the hardware used for physics experiment did evolved from CAMAC or FastBus to VME and more recently Network devices gathering data from custome FPGAs acquisition boards. The Midas drivers directory will reflect this evolution as you will find sub-directories specific to each of these hardware family. Obviously not all Models for a given category are present, but similarity between their operations may provide you a good starting point for a particular driver development.

CAMAC

Even though CAMAC is not much used any more, when simple test need to be setup and old equipment can be found, it can provide a quick solution to an otherwise heavy or cumbersome DAQ system. Recent USB/CAMAC interfaces can be attractive as they provide fast CAMAC cycle, data collection through preloaded CAMAC list and shelf permanently the old ISA or PCI interfaces that newer hardware can't support anymore anyway.

FastBus

This hardware was accessed through VME. Modules are obsolete.

VME

VME is still widely used and various type of VME interfaces can be found such as: VME processors, USB link, Optical link to PCIe card, Network based interfaces. BS Bit3 617, SIS3100 interfaces, VMIC and VxWorks processors are the main DAQ platform used with Midas.

Bus

The software layers sections are used in particular for Slow Control System. Example are available in the distribution under examples/slowcont/frontend.c including the hv and multi class with the nulldev device and null bus driver.

Note: not all the device drivers implement the triple layer (Class, Device, Bus) as some include the hardware calls directly from the device layer.