MX: A portable toolkit for data acquisition and control
W.M. Lavender
Illinois Institute of Technology,
Biological, Chemical and Physical Sciences Department
MX is designed to be a portable toolkit for distributed data acquisition and
control of motors and other devices commonly used at X-ray beamlines. It
consists of a set of libraries that may be used to extend the capabilities
of existing control systems or to interface two control systems. It may
be used as an application programming interface for user programs and as
a standalone control system when used with a set of bundled programs. MX
now runs under Unix, Windows 95/NT and DOS. Currently, MX is being extended
to serve as a device control subsystem for EPICS. This will provide EPICS
with access to a set of motors and devices that it currently does not have
interfaces for. In particular, this will provide EPICS with a much easier
way to interface with PC-based equipment for which only a binary Windows 95
or NT driver is provided. Additionally, since MX can run standalone without
EPICS, this allows a device driver to be developed at a user's home
institution before bringing it to the beamline.
(posted 28-Oct-97 jw)