Selecting an Application Programming Interface
6-1
6
Programming Options
Selecting an Application Programming Interface
The PIO Series supports two different device driver interfaces to best
match your programming needs. The supported driver interfaces are
●
DriverLINX
—
An interface that is hardware and operating system
independent and supports multitasking, multi-threading applications.
●
Direct I/O
—
An interface that is operating system independent and
supports single-tasking, single-threaded access to an Intel 8255-like
function call interface.
DriverLINX Interface
For maximum portability and versatility, it is recommended that the
DriverLINX interface be used. The DriverLINX interface has the
following advantages:
●
Hardware independence
—
DriverLINX supports ISA, PCMCIA,
and PCI digital I/O boards with a common interface as well as digital
ports on analog I/O and counter/timer boards.
●
Operating system independence
—
DriverLINX supports Windows
95/98 and Windows NT with a common interface.
●
Shared hardware access
—
DriverLINX allows multiple processes
or threads to cooperatively share hardware resources.
●
Multitasking, multi-threading support
—
DriverLINX provides
the synchronization and coordination for multitasking,
multi-threading applications to safely access shared hardware
resources.
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