Linux is one of the most prevalent operating systems in scientific and engineering data acquisition and control applications. Many users are anxious to use this open-source environment for their acquisition and analysis tasks. Although many DAQ firms have ignored the Linux market, or relegated their Linux support to unofficial user forums, UEI provides complete Linux drivers for their data-acquisition hardware, including complete factory support.
UEI's Linux drivers are included with our hardware at no charge; they come as part of the PowerDAQ and PowerDNA CDs. You may also download the latest version of the drivers from our web site. These drivers are designed to work with Ver 2.4.x and 2.6.x releases of the Linux kernel for x86 and x86_64 CPUs with all popular versions of Linux. As newer kernel versions appear on the market, UEI is committed to fully test its Linux drivers, supply any modifications that might be necessary, and place the latest drivers on our web site.
The PowerDAQ Linux data acquisition driver (for our PCI/PXI/ISA boards) includes complete source code for both the User Library and the Kernel module. The user-level library is supplied in C source code, whose API is almost identical to the API used in the PowerDAQ for Windows driver. UEI users wishing to port their Windows applications to Linux can do so with minimal effort. Further, the sequence of calls in Linux is the same as under Windows.This release supports as many as 32 PowerDAQ cards in one backplane. Requirements include a system with a 100-MHz Pentium or better, 64M bytes of system memory, the Gnu C (gcc) compiler Ver 2.95.x or later. The Linux kernel source code must also be installed on the system.
The PowerDNA driver for Linux provides a user space library communicating to the hardware through Linux's network stack and does not need a kernel module. It works with virtually all Linux distributions/CPUs (x86, x86_64, Itanium, PPC, Sparc, etc).
