|
HP OpenVMS Systemsask the wizard |
|
The Question is: Hello, What would be the easiest way to talk to a card reader on a VMS system and put the data into a MUMPS database layered on top of openVMS. I saw your example of an IDE disk controller driver and could use that to write a C driver for the device but am stumped after that. Also, would these devices be addressable over the DECNET cluster? Thanks for any info. Doug The Answer is : You will want to use sys$qio or language-specific calls to read the data from the card reader, using an existing device driver. Examples of $qio calls are in various manuals in the OpenVMS documentation set, including programming details specific to existing hardware device drivers provided in the OpenVMS I/O User's Reference Manual. Put another way, you should be able to accomplish this task using only user-mode application code, and you probably won't require a device driver. IDE disk controller device drivers are completely unrelated to this. An OpenVMS device driver is a kernel-mode application for direct kernel-mode communications with a hardware device, and there are already device drivers for serial communications assuming that is the card reader is connected. (You would only need a device driver if you had a custom controller, such as a PCI adapter for the card reader, and particularly a PCI adapter that is not already supported by OpenVMS.) There is no such thing as a "DECnet cluster". Please review the section "OpenVMS Cluster (SCS) over DECnet? Over IP?" in the OpenVMS FAQ for additional details and background. You can use DECnet FAL and RMS calls to read and write files remotely. The OpenVMS Wizard would encourage retaining Compaq or other vendor for OpenVMS consulting and programming services. If you wish to pursue this yourself, you will want to familiarize yourself with the contents of the OpenVMS Programming Concepts Manual.
|