🚀 go-pugleaf

Greetings!

  We recently purchased a PC-based transputer system consisting of two
T805 trams, along with a/d and d/a trams from Sunnyside Systems; we are
developing a real-time control system (using the INMOS Ansi C Toolset) for a 
hydraulic actuator used in motor control studies.  This is my first exposure 
to Transputer programming, and I'm appalled at the (apparent?) lack of 
documentation on INMOS Ansi C.  Granted, the examples which came the the C 
compiler DID help somewhat, but they did not explain the whole story.  The 
local INMOS dealers claimed there are no books on Parallel C!  With this in 
mind, I turn to any  experts out there, with a few burning questions:

1) the Ansi C user manual mentions that all Channels must be initialised
   before use:  is this true even for single channels (not arrays 
   of channels) when they are defined in .cfs files?  (There are examples 
   on the Ansi C disks which DON'T use ChanInit with single channels defined
   in configuration files; and all the programs I've written in the same
   manner seem to work fine.)

2) It seems to me that the "Proc" family of functions are only useful for
   defining procedures running in parallel on the SAME TRANSPUTER, since
   for a network it's much easier to combine and place several linked 
   units using the configuration language.  Is there an advantage to
   using "ProcPar" ?  Am I missing something?

3) What kind of handshaking goes on during the transfer of a single byte
   over a channel?  How long should this transfer take?  It seems to me
   that channel transfers are a bottleneck in my programs... should this
   be the case?

 Please excuse my ignorance, but I REALLY need your help on this.

Many thanks in advance,

Jan Duha
duha@rekpmx.biomed.mcgill.ca
duha@ee470.ee.mcgill.ca

Neuromuscular Control Lab
Department of Biomedical Engineering 
McGill University
Montreal, Canada
514-398-6734