1.6 Compiling and loading code

  All of the H1 Silicon Hit Finding code is so far written in C, though it is in principle possible to have Pascal, Fortran or Assembler code as well.

The main program running on the PPCs resides at memory address $0700'0000. It is loaded from FPROM if the PPC is booted. See [Hay97] for more detailed information.

The user task is loaded from the QUAD840_SIDAQ Mac in Room 301 via MPW shell to a battery backed up memory in the PowerPC crate. On a reset, it is loaded to every PPC found in the crate.

Since the task has specific jobs to do for CST and BST, it is splitted into two levels:

• the first level handles all arguments and evaluates all relevant parameters. It decides which routines have to be called (CST or BST). By convention, this file is called SiPPCUser.c.
• the second level is sub-branch specific. The second level routines are contained in the files CSTRoutines.c or BSTRoutines.c respectively.

The three mentioned files are compiled and linked together using the Motorola SDK C compiler (cf. [Mot96a]) and ppclink within the MPW environment on the SIDAQ Mac. The resulting .xcoff-file is then processed with makeXXCOFF giving the .xxcoff-file to download. See the SiPPCUser-Makefile on the Mac.

Since the first level has reached some stability it is suggested to change mainly the routine files.