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News

The "SIGNews" website pages provide a brief, concise look at what is happening with DSP software and hardware at Signalogic. These pages are continuously updated, especially in the areas of new features and improvements / repairs for software packages.

Software News

DSPower-HWLib Improvements (DirectDSP)

Click here for general information about the DirectDSP software package.

  • 32-bit DirectDSP

    32-bit versions of the DirectDSP software package Librarys are now available, including Borland C/C++ 5.01 and MSVC 4.1 project file examples

  • Visual Basic Interface Update

    source code and form examples now include digital scope, strip-chart recorder, and rudimentary debugger

  • Addition of DSGetSymbolAddress Function

    the DSGetSymbolAddress function has been added, which allows symbol addresses (of variables and function identifiers) to be read from COFF files (for ADSP210xx, DSP32C, DSP3210, DSP56xxx, and 'C5x DSPs) at run-time

  • Bug-Fixes in MATLAB Interface

    An intermittent problem was corrected where the EngineOpen function could crash. Use of the WaitForBuffer and WaitForFlag functions in synchronous mode has been corrected. Also, using the Close button (upper left of MATLAB command window) can leave some DirectDSP Librarys incorrectly loaded--the workaround is to use the "exit" command when closing MATLAB instead.

DSPower-Block Diagram Improvements (Real-Time Composer™)

Click here for more information about the Real-Time Composer software package.

Visual Bench™

Visual Bench is a suite of stand-alone, virtual instruments which can use any of the 75+ types of DSP/acquisition hardware supported by Signalogic software. These instruments have been built using the Visual Basic interface provided by the DirectDSP software package. Using Visual Basic as the programming language has allowed Signalogic to build powerful instruments with a minimum of code, which leads to greater reliability and straightforward future expansion.

The Visual Bench Tech Edition includes Function Generator and Digital Multimeter instruments. The Visual Bench Professional Edition includes Tech Edition instruments plus Digital Oscilloscope and Spectrum Analyzer instruments.

  • Function Generator

    • operates with over 75 off-the-shelf, DSP-based DAQ boards; hardware cost ranges from USD 200 to USD 3000+

    • sine, square wave, sine wave, triangle, ramp, pulse, and arbitrary (user-defined) output

    • controls include amplitude, duty-cycle (for pulse output), digital offset and scale, number of channels and channel list, hardware attenuation/gain (if applicable), and sampling frequency

    • sampling frequency automatically set to nearest possible hardware-supported value

    • output frequencies from dc to 150 kHz*

    • output amplitude flatness within 0.05 dB*

    • output SNR up to 92 dB*

    • user preferences include selectable knob/control styles, simultaneous text entry for all controls, and instrument panel size

    • save/recall of session settings to configuration file

    • various onscreen indicators, including output frequency precision, graphical waveform indicator, and frequency and amplitude units

  • Digital Multimeter (DMM)

    • measures Volts, ac Volts, Amps, ac Amps, Ohms, and temperature

    • store acquired waveform data to .tim or .wav file

    • selectable units, auto-range

    • free run mode, or one-shot mode

    A Visual Bench Tech Edition is available now and Visual Bench Professional Edition will be available in 2Q98.

    *Depends on which hardware is used.

New DSP/Analog I/O Board Drivers

  • Motorola EVM56303, EVM56603, and EVM56002 (note: requires Signalogic ISA interface card, which connects to host port and provides data transfers at 20x rate of standard serial port interface)

  • Domain Technologies DSPCard 56002

  • Board Drivers Soon-to-be-Released

    • Texas Instruments EVMC54x (TMS320C54x)

    • BittWare Blacktip and EZ-Lab

Hypersignal Improvements

  • addition of automatic two-channel operation to long FFT, long convolution, long correlation, and long stimulus & response functions

  • addition of floating-point frequency-domain output in FFT Generation function and floating-point compatibility in all frequency domain display functions (including Magnitude Display, Phase Display, Contour, and 3-D Waterfall)

  • addition of floating-point time-domain output in Filter Construction functions and Difference Equations function*

  • addition of starting seek value (in samples) for output D/A in Analog Conversion function. Entry is made after NUMBER OF SAMPLES value, separated by a comma. Default value if no entry is zero (start of waveform file).

  • addition of driver for Innovative Integration PC44, which is capable of 16-bit 500 kHz or 1 or 2 MHz acquisition

  • upgrade of TIGER-30 and BB71 unit support for full four (4) channels; see multichannel entry information in file addendum.txt for details on use.

  • addition of user-specifiable order in IIR filter design; value of zero causes auto-calculation of filter order to meet specifications (previous mode)

  • addition of new macro language "pipe" commands, allowing greater interactive control of Hypersignal displays and instruments in engine mode

  • output filename field added to File Export function, to increase flexibility; a NULL value (no entry) will cause function to automatically create output filename with "_t", "_f", etc. suffix and ".txt" extension, as before

  • reverse-time option added to 3-D waterfall display (Hypersignal-Acoustic only), which allows better viewing of spectra with time-decay characteristics. Enter comma and 'R' at end of SURFC,GRID field.

  • addition of NumToHex function to macro language; converts short or long integer value to string representing value in hex format. '0x' prefixes or 'h' suffixes are not added to the string.

Click here for more information about the Hypersignal Workstation updates/corrections, the Hypersignal-Macro software package, or the Hypersignal-Acoustic software package.

Software Repairs, i.e. Bug-Fixes :)

  • DirectDSP

    Click here for general information about the DirectDSP software package.

    • correction to MATLAB interface, where intermittent crash could occur on EngineOpen function

    • correction to DSWaitForBuffer and DSWaitForFlag functions when DS_WFB_SYNC constant is used (synchronous mode)

    • correction to DSGetSymbolAddress when used on DSP32C and DSP3210 COFF files

  • Real-Time Composer™

    Click here for general information about the Real-Time Composer™ software package.

    • correction to problems with online Help display under Win95

    • corrections to problems saving and retrieving diagrams

  • Hypersignal

    • correction unit-step and delta functions in Difference Equations when used in equation with complex output (this fix also corrected slight errors in frequency zoom and sampling rate conversion macro functions)

    • correction made to waveform display auto-scaling for floating-point format waveform

    • correction to .asm filter code generation for T.I. 'C25 and 'C5x devices

    • very slight correction to IEEE-to-DSP conversion routines for T.I. 'C3x and 'C4x devices (when values are exactly equal to power of 2 or -2)

    • correction made to results of FFT Generation on complex waveforms when floating-point output is enabled

    • fix to difference equations complex output, in cases where the actual output file length was incorrectly twice as long as reflected in the header

    • fix to DSP5600x board functions when output is in floating-point format; conversion from 24-bit integer to 32-bit floating-point was not being performed correctly in some cases (including FFT)

    • fix to real/imag FFT floating-point output data in FFT Generation function when run on DSP32C or DSP3210 boards; only real/imag data (and not mag/phz) data was affected

    • correction to error message display for DSP file download problems; in some cases error messages were not being displayed and no indication was given of the problem

    • fix to GetDataValue and PutDataValue macro language functions when waveform file is floating-point

    • modification to initialization of DSP5600x hardware to load host-interface code at init-time rather than file load-time. Consistent now with other DSP hardware with separate host-interface code, such as some T.I. 'C3x boards.

    • change of LEN macro language constant to WVFRMLEN; macro language files using this value must be changed when the need to recompile arises

    • increase in number of allowed macro language procedure parameters (25)

    • repair to T.I. EVM 'C30 board driver, which was broken during changes made to previous version (4.00xh)

    • update of waveform header-editor (headitor) program to include extended header values

    • correction to LPC Autocorrelation function when output waveform file used extended waveform header and input waveform file used short header

    • correction to problem with external program execution not correctly searching DOS path list and environment variable

    • correction to problem where frequency domain display setup menus would hang if waveform data was floating-point and had length > 8192

    • correction to zoom-in / zoom-out sequences in frequency domain displays with log frequency axis, where sequence was not invertible

    • correction to real/imag FFT output for DSP56xxx boards when floating-point output enabled; problem was only half of floating-point R/I data was being calculated (problem did not occur with fixed-point output)

    • correction to analog I/O channel mapping in PC32 driver when only two-channel board is installed

    • correction to PC32 driver when used with 512k x 32 SRAM version boards

    • correction to 'C3x board analog input streaming to disk problem with digital offset and scale factors

      Click here for more information about the Hypersignal-Macro software package or the Hypersignal-Acoustic software package.

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