User`s manual

Introduction
What is wxWidgets?
wxWidgets was started in 1992 by Julian Smart at the University of Edinburgh. Initially started as a project for creating
applications portable across Unix and Windows, it has grown to support the Mac platform, WinCE, and many other toolkits
and platforms. The number of developers contributing to the project is now in the dozens and the toolkit has a strong userbase
that includes everyone from open source developers to corporations such as AOL. So what is special about wxWidgets
compared with other cross-platform GUI toolkits?
wxWidgets gives you a single, easy-to-use API for writing GUI applications on multiple platforms that still utilize the native
platform's controls and utilities. Link with the appropriate library for your platform (Windows/Unix/Mac, others coming
shortly) and compiler (almost any popular C++ compiler), and your application will adopt the look and feel appropriate to
that platform. On top of great GUI functionality, wxWidgets gives you: online help, network programming, streams,
clipboard and drag and drop, multithreading, image loading and saving in a variety of popular formats, database support,
HTML viewing and printing, and much more.
What is Microsoft MSVC?
MSVC is a general-purpose code-authoring environment suitable for development of Windows applications of any type.
Armada extends the MSVC IDE through the addition of dynamically created MSVC-compatible C++ classes specifically
tailored to perform real-time data streaming functions.
What kinds of applications are possible with Innovative Integration hardware?
Data acquisition, data logging, stimulus-response and signal processing jobs are easily solved with Innovative Integration
baseboards using the Malibu software. There are a wide selection of peripheral devices available in the Matador DSP product
family, for all types of signals from DC to RF frequency applications, video or audio processing. Additionally, multiple
Innovative Integration baseboards can be used for a large channel or mixed requirement systems and data acquisition cards
from Innovative can be integrated with Innovative's other DSP or data acquisition baseboards for high-performance signal
processing.
Why do I need to use Malibu with my Baseboard?
One of the biggest issues in using the personal computer for data collection, control, and communications applications is the
relatively poor real-time performance associated with the system. Despite the high computational power of the PC, it cannot
reliably respond to real-time events at rates much faster than a few hundred hertz. The PC is really best at processing data,
not collecting it. In fact, most modern operating systems like Windows are simply not focused on real-time performance, but
rather on ease of use and convenience. Word processing and spreadsheets are simply not high-performance real-time tasks.
The solution to this problem is to provide specialized hardware assistance responsible solely for real- time tasks. Much the
same as a dedicated video subsystem is required for adequate display performance, dedicated hardware for real-time data
collection and signal processing is needed. This is precisely the focus of our baseboards – a high performance, state-of-the-
art, dedicated digital signal processor coupled with real-time data I/O capable of flowing data via a 64-bit PCI bus interface.
The hardware is really only half the story. The other half is the Malibu software tool set which uses state of the art software
techniques to bring our baseboards to life in the Windows environment. These software tools allow you to create applications
for your baseboard that encompass the whole job - from high speed data acquisition, to the user interface.
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