What's New in the Latest DAPL 2000 Operating System Release

Developer's Toolkit for DAPL Update

The DAPL 2000 operating system version 2.56 is associated with a new release of the Developer's Toolkit for DAPL version 5.10. The new Toolkit supports Microsoft Visual C++ compilers from versions 6.0 to 9.0 (Microsoft Visual Studio 6, Visual Studio .NET 2002, Visual Studio .NET 2003, Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008). DAPL 2000 version 2.56 supports command modules developed using all versions of the Toolkit up to version 5.10.

The DAPL 2000 operating system, starting with version 2.53, is associated with a new release of the Developer's Toolkit for DAPL version 5.03. Previous releases of DAPL 2000 added new DSP features to take advantage of the processing power available with the new DAP 5200a and DAP 5400a boards. However, the Developer's Toolkit for DAPL did not keep pace. That problem is corrected now, and all of the new features — plus a whole lot more — are available to custom module developers.

If you have older command modules, they are still compatible with this new DAPL 2000 release, no change is required. However, whether or not you use the new features, any command modules developed using version 5.03 of the Developer's Toolkit for DAPL cannot be loaded to Data Acquisition Processors running version 2.52 or any earlier version of the DAPL 2000 system. That is, if you use the new Toolkit, you must use the new system release.

The new Developer's Toolkit functions make available the DSP processing in all data types supported by the DAPL system. Custom applications that need a large dynamic range, or that need to retain precision that would ordinarily be lost to integer rounding, can take advantage of the additional data types.

• WORD— the same blazing speed as before, often the best choice for working directly with data samples, only a few milliseconds latency after data are available;
• LONG— more data to push through memory and processing, definitely not as fast, but with excellent precision;
• FLOAT— not quite the speed of WORD data, not quite the precision of LONG data, but an easy compromise with excellent scaling for wide dynamic range;
• DOUBLE— slower and bulky, but the highest levels of precision and widest dynamic range.

Features added in previous releases of DAPL 2000 version 2.5:

• New notations... Clearer configurations
  
• New FFT features... More precision for built-in commands
  
• New FFT window features... More flexibility
  
• New FIRFILTER features... More data types and precision
  
• New data handling features... More data types available
  
• DAPL expression extensions... Supporting the new data types
  
• FORMAT extensions... More expressive
  
• New STATISTICS command... Better monitoring
  
• Commands module... 32-bit processing commands
  
• Updated DAPIO32 services... More system information queries supported
  

DAPL 2000, version 2.56, is compatible with the following PCI bus Data Acquisition Processors:

• DAP 840
• DAP 4000a
• DAP 4200a
• DAP 4400a
• DAP 5000a
• DAP 5016a
• DAP 5200a
• DAP 5216a
• DAP 5380a
• DAP 5400a