Measurement Computing ADLIB WIN - Manual (Page 11)

Chapter 1 Introduction 1-1
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 OVERVIEW
ADLIB WIN is a set of sophisticated, high level, dynamically linked library (DLL) data acquisition
subroutines for programmers involved in the developing of process and/or data acquisition applications.
The functions supplied with ADLIB provide an easy to use interface to ADAC PCI series data acquisition
products, shielding the programmer from both the complexity of low level DAQ board programming and
the complicated DMA and interrupt handling mechanisms of the Windows environment. ADLIB supports
DMA and Software Polled data transfer methods for acquiring data on the ADAC PCI series cards.
ADLIB WIN removes the complex task of allocating suitable DMA, and Interrupt buffers by automatically
allocating buffer(s) when a DAQ board’s subsystem is initialized. The application programmer can then
retrieve a pointer to buffer and/or set up a windows message handler or CALLBACK routine that will be
called when each buffer has been completed. ADLIB allows N buffers of size M for each or the DAQ
board's logical devices and the only limitation on quantity and size of the buffer(s) is the amount of
available system memory.
ADLIB WIN buffer pointers are not just pointers to a DAQ board's subsystem data, they point to a
structure that contains the buffer type, size, linear data address, physical data address, current sample
count, hardware trigger points, completion flags, status flags and error flags.
ADLIB WIN provides support for an unlimited number of DAQ boards, the only restrictions being
available memory.
ADLIB WIN provides a multitasking environment through which multiple logical devices can run
concurrent and report directly back to the user application when the requested ADLIB service has
completed. ADLIB services can be either a single cycle or continuous cycle operation.
ADLIB WIN provides extensive error reporting through each library call and buffer structure. In addition,
ADLIB employs error control functions that can enable or disable certain types of error conditions.
The ADLIB WIN Series of drivers consists of the following:
ADLIB WDM – used with the ADAC PCI series of DAQ boards for Windows 98/ME/2000;
based on Microsoft’s Windows Driver Model, also includes support for ADAC PCI Series boards
for Windows NT 4.0.