Instruction manual

AMPDIO DRIVERS
Page 11
1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Windows AMPDIO Drivers
The Windows AMPDIO Drivers are Windows software drivers that support a range of Amplicon
digital and analogue data acquisition cards. They consist of kernel level drivers, a comprehensive
application level Windows Dynamic link library (DLL) interface and example software. The software
can handle most analogue and digital signal types.
The drivers support the following functional categories:
 Digital I/O
 Counter Timer Functions
 Analogue Input
 Analogue output
The drivers are fully compatible with Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows
Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows 95, Windows 98 and
Windows ME. Version 5.00 onwards also includes support for the x64 editions of Windows XP,
Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008.
Amplicon provide a comprehensive range of Personal Computer based data acquisition products
that provide very high performance, affordable hardware with comprehensive software support.
When a large-scale system is required, multiple boards can be added without conflict. The capacity
of the PC mounted hardware can be extended by external expansion panels to provide a
comprehensive system with low cost per channel and maintained high performance.
1.2 Products supported
The drivers were initially developed to support the Amplicon 200 series of ISA digital IO/counter
timer cards.
The drivers have since been expanded to support a number of ISA and PCI analogue data
acquisition cards and PCI digital IO/counter timer cards.
The Amplicon 200 series cards functionality defines the underlying software architecture of the
drivers. It is therefore important to have an understanding of the architecture of this family of cards
in order to fully utilize the driver. Information on these cards can be found in the appropriate
manuals on the Softman CD, e.g. PC215E manual.
There have been four major releases of the driver, Version 1.x, Version 2.x, Version 4.x and
Version 5.x. Version 3.0 was never commercially released.
Version 1.x Supported Series 200 Digital IO / Counter Timer cards.
Version 2.x Added support for additional Digital IO / Relay cards as well as rudimentary
support for basic analogue cards.
Version 3.x Added support for transferring large buffers of information to and from the
cards under interrupt control. (Never commercially released)
Version 4.x Added support for multifunction Analogue input / output cards and defines
a new analogue interface standard.
Version 5.x Added support for Windows Vista and x64 editions of Windows.