PXDMA.EXE is for our PX Series frame grabbers.
PXCDMA.EXE is for our PXC Series frame grabbers.

Both programs use the DOS extender DOS4GW and therefore require the program DOS4GW.EXE that is included in this package. This program should be placed in your path.

PXDMA also requires FLATMEM.COM which is included in this package. FLATMEM must be executed from your CONFIG.SYS file. It MUST be the first line in that file. It's purpose is to steal memory from the system before the other memory managers are executed. The following is an example line for your CONFIG.SYS:

device=c:\flatmem.com 1024

The parameter 1024 specifies the amount of memory in KB that is reserved for the PX frame grabbers. 1024 should be sufficient for up to 3 frame grabbers. If not, use a larger number like 2048.

Both programs (PXDMA and PXCDMA) are similar. They provide input displays at the top of the screen and output displays at the bottom of the screen with function keys in the middle for starting a stopping the tests.

Each program will list as many frame grabbers as it finds, up to 4 in the input boxes at the top of the screen. You can set the test parameters for each frame grabber by changing the bit depth and resolution. F1 is used to start the test.

The test results are displayed in the output boxes at the bottom of the screen. The main field to watch in the boxes at the bottom is the DMA ERRORS. Our boards always transfer at real time, but not always without errors. The errors depend on the conflicts on the PCI bus. For successful transfers you should get ZERO errors.

You can slow down the VGA updates by using F4 to change the update rate. This will take some traffic off the PCI bus.

You can also use F2 to simulate a program that constantly destroys the cache in the Pentium. This tends to add to PCI bus traffic.

There are a few other programs that may be included in this package from time to time, such as PXCREV, PXCGRAB, etc. The source code is included with these samples and hence they probably do not need any discussion.

PXREV and PXCREV should be used if you think there is a problem recognizing the boards in your computer. These two programs will find and list all the PX or PXC boards in your machine. 

The source code for PXCDMA and PXDMA is included in this package. PXCDMA and PXDMA are designed to be Watcom 32-bit programs because they allocate 4 buffers. If you don't have a Watcom compiler you will not be
able to rebuild them. If you do have a Watcom compiler, the build lines are below. These instructions are also in the source code at the top of each file.

PXCDMA:
wcl386 -mf -w3 pxcdma.c pxc2_fw.lib frame_fw.lib video_fw.lib

PXDMA:
wcl386 -mf -w3 pxdma.c px5_fw.lib vmenu_fw.lib