Ada in embedded boards for scientific and medical instruments
Robert C. Leif, Suzanne B. Leif · 1998
1. ABSTRACT The combination of Ada's new class-wide programming with tagged types, generics, and representation clauses for both enumerated and record types greatly facilitates low level programing. A generic board register class was extended to represent the specific hardware and provide high level abstractions for reading and changing the states of the hardware registers. Subprograms included in this generic board register class include functions and procedures which address these registers by name and employ high-level syntax for bit manipulation. The use of these objects derived from the register class permits the development of easily understood, maintainable software for computer boards which control and acquire data from devices including scientific and medical instruments. A software library providing these and other relevant functionalities and an application with a commercial 100 megahertz scaler board for a PC will be described.