LabVIEW
How can I install Softing CANCard2 driver on a target PC running real-time module?
Unless Softing has a specific driver for the Pharlap ETS RT OS you can't. While Pharlap ETS is on the application level Win32 compatible (although you shouldn't expect any Windows API functionaoitly that wasn't already present in Windows 2000, and even that is not fully emulated/supportd) the kernel is completely different and therefore the device drivers necessary to interface to hardware are different too. A Windows device driver is for the Pharlap ETS OS simply a file with a bunch of random numbers without any useful meaning.
So you have to check with Softing if they support Phrlap ETS with specific drivers. There is a possibility that they might but not a big one. Pharlap ETS is not only an expensive system to buy the software and driver development toolkit for but due to its reatime characteristic also a very different way of writing device drivers. And the market for a manufacturer such as Softing is not going to be big, so the chances to recover the original development costs for such a driver might look pretty dim.
@mjesfand wrote:I use a desktop PC as the real-time target and I perform the CAN send/recieve using CANL2.DLL file in the target .vi code which can be downloaded to the target using Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX).
Do you mean that the Softing CAN interfaces are not compatible with LabVIEW real-time module (even if it could be posssible to install the driver on the target)?
Thanks a lot for your help.
The CANL2.DLL is only the user space component of the Windows driver. To actually access hardware in a Windows system you do need to have a kernel driver (usually *.sys) that can access the hardware. The user component runs in ring 3 of the CPU and can NOT access hardware directly. But the kernel driver that is accessed through this user space DLL can not work in Pharlap ETS since the entire kernel is very different than on Windows, including how the PCI resources are managed.
You really need to contact Softing and ask them for a Pharlap ETS comptabile driver, preferably specificially for LabVIEW RT, since the Pharlap ETS system that NI is using is a somewhat NI specific customization of it.
How do you mean you installed the driver on the target. I'm pretty sure that executing the setup.exe installer of your driver directly on the target is not possible, and copying the DLL to the RT system is anything but installing it.
Unless you work for free and your time costs nothing, it would be most probably a lot cheaper to simpy buy an PCI-8511 interface though.
