A Cost Effective Way to Operate Instrumentation Using the
Motorola MVME162 Industry Pack Bus and HiDEOS

Jim Kowalkowski
Argonne National Laboratory
Advanced Photon Source


The HiDEOS software package has been implemented at the Advanced Photon Source to run the Motorola MVME162 embedded controller along with a variety of industry pack modules. The HiDEOS based MVME162 controller acts as an intelligent second slave I/O processor in a VME crate. The implementation consists of VxWorks running the EPICS control system package with HiDEOS running the MVME162 in stand alone mode with no
additional operating system. Use of Industry Pack modules provides an inexpensive way to control a large number of serial ports, add a GPIB controller, or add a large number of analog and digital I/O modules at a reasonable cost. HiDEOS only utilizes software available in the public domain, allowing users to operate the MVME162 and supported Industry Pack hardware at no additional software cost. The HiDEOS package has been interfaced and integrated into the EPICS control system toolkit and handles the backplane communication with tasks under VxWorks and adds an object oriented model to EPICS device support. Being object oriented, HiDEOS contains Industry Pack control classes that make it easy to add support for new Industry Pack modules.