User manual

Appendix
ComTec GmbH 7-17
7.6.5. MPA3.INI file
Q: With MPA-3, how is the polarity etc for a specific ADC setup? (Canberra 8715). The manual doesn't
seem to cover this, unless we missed it.
A: Please look into the manual in chapter 5 for the description of the MPA3.INI file: the MPA3.INI contains
the ADC port handshake signal polarities in a line polarity=..., see figure 5.2. Here is the snippet out of the
MPA3.INI file shown in this figure:
;ADC Port Control Signal Polarities (hex):
; 1) polarity: [DENB;ENC;DACC;DEAD;DRDY]
; DRDY (bit 0) : 0 = active high, 1 = active low
; DEAD (bit 1) : 0 = active high, 1 = active low
; DACC (bit 2) : 0 = active high, 1 = active low
; ENC (bit 3) : 0 = active high, 1 = active low
; DENB (bit 4) : 0 = active low, 1 = active high
; Tracor Northern ADC's:
;polarity=0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0
; ND 58x ADC's:
;polarity=F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F,F
; Silena or Laben ADC's:
;polarity=13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13
; FAST or Canberra ADC's:
polarity=5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5,5
You may inspect also the ADC connection guide in the support section of our website. You will here find
that the polarity parameter should be set to F for the 8715.
Q: I am writing this because I had a problem with our MPA-3 system. After installing the MPA software,
including the system driver, the MPA3.EXE server started as normal and detected both the base and
quad-port module. However, when an aquisition was started the program stopped responding to any key
or mouse event, saying acquisition was still OFF. The process could only be killed using NT's task
manager. At first I suspected problems with the new RT clock, but quickly realised that NT service pack 4
had been installed on the computer. And lo and behold, after "downgrading" NT back to service pack 3
everything worked normal again. I did not elaborate further on this to find the source of conflict. If you
have some updated software/drivers/fix to this problem, please inform me.
A: please inspect your mpa3.ini file. You will find the following lines:
; watchpriority for DMA transfer thread (between -1..2)
; set watchpriority=0 if your system hangs after start
; watchpriority=1 gives on most systems a better performance
watchpriority=1
Please edit this line into watchpriority=0 By the way, you can download the latest MPANT software from
our web-page. Look under support.
7.6.6. Installation Problems
Q: We followed the "Download instructions" slavely. Contrary to the instructions Windows 2000 did not
ask automatically for a driver.