Motion Commander III for Windows NT and Windows 95/98 is here! Motion Commander III is a genuine 32-bit program that has been optimized for the Windows NT operating system. Please attach these release notes to your Motion Commander II User’s Manual for reference. These Motion Commander III Release Notes along with the Motion Commander II User's Manual provide a complete description of all of the product's features.

MC32 Program: Installing Motion Commander III is a three-step process. Insert the diskette into your floppy drive and run "a:\SETUP" to install the MC32.EXE program and its support files. The first time that you run Motion Commander, you will get a dialog box that decompresses Motion Commander’s support files.

PC-Bus Driver for Windows NT: After installing the program, move "WINRT.SYS" from the "c:\Mc32" directory into your "c:\winnt\system32\drivers" directory. Move this file only if you intend to communicate with PMAC over the PC-bus in Windows NT. You will be instructed to re-boot your computer after your initial attempt to open communications in order to complete the installation of this driver.

Security Key Driver: Finally, run "c:\Mc32\KEY\SETUP" to install the driver for the hardware security key. You must re-boot your computer to complete the installation of this driver. You can skip this step if you are installing a demo version of Motion Commander III that does not include a hardware security key. If you ever want to uninstall the security key driver, run "c:\Mc32\KEY\SETUP /U".

Motion Commander III can be installed in the same directory as Motion Commander II. The executables MC32.EXE and MC32R.EXE and their DLL’s and other support files have different names than their 16-bit versions. Motion Commander III uses the same subdirectory structure as 16-bit Motion Commander II for compatibility.

Motion Commander III should not be in communication with a PMAC at the same time as the Delta Tau PMAC Executive program. Close communication in one program before opening it in the other. Motion Commander sets PMAC’s communication I-variables I1, I3, I4, I6 and I9 to maximize communication robustness. Set the Motion Commander PMAC device’s "Clean-Up" attribute to "I3=2I4=0I6=1" to set PMAC’s communication variables to the best values for the Delta Tau PMAC Executive program, PEWIN32.

At the time of this writing, Delta Tau’s PEWIN32 communications driver interferes with PC-bus Motion Commander communication if DPRAM communication is enabled by Delta Tau’s MotionExe utility. To avoid this interference, set "DPRAM Adr:" to "None" in the MotionExe utility.

The 32-bit Motion Commander III and the 16-bit Motion Commander II are fully cross-compatible, with the exception of a few features not ported over at this time (see next section). Instrument panels created by one version of Motion Commander can be run by the other version and vice-versa (MCS, MCP, and MCG files). The Motion Commander III hardware security key is different than the 16-bit Motion Commander II key, however.

Generic Port and Memory I/O Devices, support for Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), and Xycom VME bus PMAC communication have not been ported over to Motion Commander v3.01 at the time of this writing. In addition, the Motion Commander Language (MCL) does not support bus reads and writes (the PORT and PORTW keywords). Please contact Greene & Morehead Engineering if your application requires any of these features.

Motion Commander III version 3.01d and later has been upgraded to 32 instrument panels. The first 16 panels are directly accessible from the Panel menu, while all 32 panels are accessible by selecting the Panel|More… menu option and entering the panel number in the resulting dialog box.

Backwards Compatibility Note: Panels above the first 16 will not load into 16-bit Motion Commander II, but the first 16 panels will load normally.

Motion Commander III supports persistent #pdefine's. Unlike normal #define’s, persistent #pdefine substitutions are not limited to file downloads. They operate on all command and query strings sent to PMAC. As an example, enter the following line at a PMAC terminal window that is connected to device d0:

Now a button can use "d0:LASER_ON" as its command string, which is much easier to debug, document, and understand than "d0:P100=1".

The #pdefine's are saved in "pdefine.ini" in the Motion Commander directory to preserve them between program runs. You can enter #pdefine's on-line in Motion Commander III or you can edit "pdefine.ini" directly by using a text editor such as Notepad. To wipe out all previously defined #pdefine's, simply delete the "pdefine.ini" file.

Backwards Compatibility Note: Persistent #pdefine's will not work with 16-bit Motion Commander II, and will most likely cause PMAC syntax errors.

Motion Commander III can now display a much wider range of BMP images (from 16-color all the way up to true-color) as wallpaper for instrument panels, plot fields, and the station background, as well as icons for buttons, indicator lamps, and plot traces. You can now add spectacular graphics to your Motion Commander stations. Motion Commander II was limited to 16-color BMP images.

Motion Commander II used the "ICON fname index" method of specifying icon images for buttons, indicator lamps, and plot traces. This was to maintain compatibility with the DOS version’s Motion Commander Icon (MCI) multi-image file format. Motion Commander III still supports this three parameter specification, but it also supports direct specification of the BMP file name with "ICON fname".

Backwards Compatibility Note: The new "ICON fname" direct specification method will not work with 16-bit Motion Commander II.

The station command "s:DOS=command" from the DOS version of Motion Commander II now works in 32-bit Windows under Motion Commander III. This station command will open a console text window, execute the DOS-style command, and then close the window. Use it for file manipulation, printing, or open a DOS session by sending "s:DOS=COMMAND.COM".

The "Run-Time Options" dialog box contains an additional parameter called Idle Sleep Time. This is the period (in msec) that Motion Commander III will "sleep" in between update cycles if no user input is received. Idle Sleep Time gives other programs processing time in addition to that already allocated by the 32-bit Windows multitasking scheduler. The value of this parameter is zero by default, and should never be set above around 100 msec. If you have a program running along side Motion Commander III that seems to be running sluggishly, setting Idle Sleep Time to just 10 msec will probably make a big difference.

If you have written your own "MC_USER.DLL" to link your custom code into the Motion Commander II program and want to port this over to 32-bit Motion Commander III, you must study the new "MC_USER.C" to learn about the minor changes that you must make to your source code.

I had a fancy colored mouse pointer installed from Windows 95 "Desktop Themes" which flashed every time that an instrument updated in the Motion Commander window. This annoying flashing was eliminated when I returned to the default Windows mouse pointer.

The Motion Commander Log window is the most useful and least used debugging aid in the Motion Commander program. Choose Tools|Command Log from the menu of the main Motion Commander window to open the command log. This command log can be used as a powerful debugging aid during station design by logging detailed information about device commands, queries, file downloads, and syntax errors. It can also be used to log time and date-stamped status, error, and user-defined messages.

Communication speed is an important factor to many Motion Commander users. The following table provides a speed comparison of the Delta Tau PMAC Executive program (PEWIN32 version 2.15) with both 32-bit and 16-bit Motion Commander programs. The elapsed times were normalized* to make comparison convenient.