TWI227856B - System for displaying waveforms of data signals and method thereof - Google Patents

Abstract

The present invention relates to a system for displaying waveforms of data signals and a method thereof. The invented system is used to display collected data signals on a computer display. The invented method comprises identifying display parameters and a data initial position of the current display; identifying the total amount of displayable data based on the display parameters and reading a to-be-displayed datum based on the data initial position; separating the datum into eight independent data channel values; converting the datum of each channel into a digital waveform based on the display parameters; and terminating the display when the total amount of displayable data has been reached.

Description

1227856 V. Description of the invention (1) [Technical field to which the invention belongs] The present invention is a system and method for analyzing and displaying data signals to be measured using computer software, and more particularly, a logic analyzer system and method using software . [Prior Art 1 In the field of computer hardware testing 'In order to test the computer and its interface devices more effectively, it is necessary to collect the data signals of the hardware system under test for various display analysis. Sometimes it is necessary to make some test fixtures to cooperate with the test program for testing. For example, when testing the serial port, parallel port, PCMC IA or CRT port of the computer, it is often necessary to display the data collected from these existing devices and display them. For further analysis. However, in the previous technology, special professional equipment was generally used to complete the signal acquisition, display, and analysis, such as logic analyzers. Although these devices are powerful and complete, the cost of such professional equipment is also very expensive. It often takes tens of thousands of yuan or more. On the other hand, current computers have very strong computing capabilities, and they have many communication ports that can be used. These communication ports have basic input / output functions. Therefore, can you use the computer's powerful processing capabilities to collect data? Displaying and analyzing the data signals of the hardware under test and replacing expensive logic analyzer equipment with software programs have become an urgent problem. [Summary of the Invention] The present invention is to provide a software-implemented logic analyzer system and method for solving the above problems.

Page 4 1227856 The data signal is transparent, the total amount calculation display module, and the material reading module for the calculation module are used to buy the word ‘tribute material. Invented, it can be relied on special purpose and easy to use. Very low-cost, data acquisition, which can meet most of the information 5 Tiger's brain display material starting position according to the data material is separated into channels when the data is stopped. Among them, the module to be displayed, which is obtained from the fund according to the display, is used for display and analysis in V. Invention Description (2). The invention provides a total amount of data signals that can be displayed through the electrical parameters and the currently displayed data. After the data is displayed, the data is converted to the total amount of data that can be displayed according to the display parameters. The invention further provides a collection of the digital acquisition module group and data parameters, the total amount of materials, and the independent value of the data separation module channel for digital wave applications without cost, and hardware costs can be carried out. The 0 waveform display method is used to display the acquisition, first determine the display position, and then read an independent value of 8 data channels from the data area according to the display parameters to determine the starting position. The data is converted into a digital waveform. Dash. Waveform display system to display it inconspicuously. 'Includes the wheat material reading module, and the data separation module collection module is used to collect the display parameters and calculate the displayable data area. 'The poor display data is separated into 8 data channels. The independent value of each channel is transferred to the signal analysis equipment displayed by the computer display, which greatly saves. If you need to collect data, you only need one communication to collect data. Port interface, several cables are simple and practical, fully consider the needs of general hardware development, and the performance is also reliable

Page 5Ϊ227856 V. Description of the invention (3) [Performance method] | The present invention provides a waveform display method for data signals, which is used to display the lean material signal collected by ^ through a computer monitor. Refer to Figure 1, ^ Determine the display parameters and the starting position of the currently displayed data (step ^ 'The display parameters include the current resolution of the display and the user settings | j, shape / data display ratio, etc., and then determine the total amount of M materials that can be displayed according to the display parameters (Step 1 0 2), read the data from the data area according to the starting position of the data, and then display the data (step 10 3), and then separate the data? 8 data | ^ independent values of the channel (step 1 0 4) For example: a byte is 4 5 Η, separated into 8 bits, from low to high order? 1, 〇, 1, 〇, 〇, 〇, 1, 77 Don't represent channelO, channell, ... (: The data of 1181111617 'converts the data of each channel into a digital waveform according to the display parameters (step 105), and stops displaying when the total amount of displayable data is reached (step 106). Compression is actually per image The question of how much data represents, because the width of the computer screen is generally 104 pixels, so you need to determine how many graphics correspond to how many data. For example, the ratio of graphics / data is 1: 2, each pixel represents 2 Data, if the total data is 32 kbyte, in order to display these data, 3 2 * 1 0 2 4/2 = 1 6 * 1 0 2 4 | the width of the element. For example, if the figure / data ratio is changed to 1 : 4, you only need 3 2 * 1 0 2 4/4 = 8 * 1 0 2 4 element width. In the opposite case, if the ratio of graphics / materials is 2: 1, that is, two elements Indicates a piece of data, then the data represented by these two elements must be the same, that is, several pieces of data that are not the same must be repeatedly displayed.

1227856 V. Description of the invention (4) The data to be displayed can be the data that has been stored in the hard disk beforehand, the data in the data storage area of the application, or the data collected by the data acquisition program in real time. For example, the present invention may also include a data acquisition process. Referring to FIG. 2, the hardware to be tested is connected to the computer communication port (step 2 01), the data acquisition amount and acquisition trigger conditions are set (step 2 0 2), and according to the data The acquisition amount allocates a corresponding amount of memory space from the kernel (step 203), masks the multi-thread switching function of the operating system (step 203), and continuously reads the hardware to be tested from the communication port according to the acquisition trigger condition (Step 2 0 5) ^ Save the collected lean material into the memory space allocated by the kernel until it is full (Step 2 6): Restore the multi-thread switching function of the operating system (Step 2 0 7), and collect The obtained data is transferred from the memory space allocated by the kernel into the data storage area (step 208), and the memory space allocated by the kernel is released (step 209). The step of the multi-thread switching function of the mask / recovery operating system is realized by shutting down / restarting the system interrupt. The memory space allocated by the kernel is a non-exchangeable memory space. The invention further provides a waveform display system for data signals, which is used to display the collected data signals through a computer display. Referring to FIG. 3, the system includes a parameter collection module 3 0 1 and a total calculation module 3 0 2. Data reading module 3 0 3, data separation module 3 0 4, data display module 3 0 5 〇 Among them, the parameter collection module 3 0 1 is used to collect and display parameters, the total calculation module 3 0 2 Used to calculate the total amount of data that can be displayed according to the display parameters. Tribute reading module 3 0 3 is used to read the tributary materials to be displayed from the tributary area. Data points 1227856 V. Description of the invention (5) Off module 3 0 4 is used to separate the read data to be displayed into independent values of 8 data channels, and data display module 3 0 5 is used to squat the independent value of each channel into a digital waveform. Similarly, if data needs to be collected, the present invention further includes a signal acquisition device, see FIG. 4, including a communication port interface device 401, a mask control soil group 402, a configuration module 403, and an acquisition module. 4 0 4, storage module 4 05. Among them, the communication port interface device 4 0 1 is used to connect the hardware under test and transmit test data, and the mask control module 4 0 2 is used to mask or restore the multi-thread switching function of the operating system. The configuration module 4 0 3 It is used to set the data acquisition amount and acquisition trigger conditions. The acquisition module 404 is used to collect data according to the acquisition trigger conditions, and the storage module 405 is used to store the data collected by the acquisition module. For protected-mode operating systems such as Windows, a temporary storage module is needed to temporarily store the collected data and transfer the data to the storage module after the mask is restored. The communication port interface device includes a signal transmission line. One end is connected to the data line and ground line of the communication port, and the other end is connected to the corresponding signal end of the hardware system under test. For different communication ports, the external input voltage is different. Therefore, the interface device can also include a voltage conversion circuit to match the output voltage of the hardware under test with the external input voltage of the communication port. The following describes a specific embodiment to illustrate the present invention. In this embodiment, the data acquisition process is first performed, and then the collected data is displayed and analyzed. However, the present invention is not limited to this embodiment.

Page 8 1227856 V. Description of the invention (6) It is possible to apply the present invention to waveform display. Taking the parallel port as an example, we know that the parallel port of a computer can be used as a general communication port in addition to a printer. It has ordinary I / 0 functions, which reminds us that we can use the parallel port as a data acquisition channel. , Make full use of the PC's powerful computing control capabilities to achieve data acquisition functions. Please refer to FIG. 5. In the parallel port embodiment of the present invention, the communication port interface device to be made in order to realize the data acquisition function has a very simple structure. It uses a common parallel port plug and 9 thin hard core wires. Weld the data and ground wires of the parallel port connector separately, and then plug the parallel port connector into the parallel port of the computer. When in use, connect the ground wire to the ground wire of the system under test, and connect other signal wires to the acquisition The signal end of the data is sufficient. It should be noted that the external input level of the parallel port is TTL level, and the range is 0 ~ 5 V. If the voltage of the circuit under test is higher than this range, a voltage conversion circuit must be added to avoid damage to the parallel port. In general, the computer's parallel port has four working modes: SPP mode (Standard Parallel Port): The most common parallel port mode is used to control the parallel port printer. It can send control commands through the control port of the parallel port. The status terminal reads the printer status, and the data terminal is a unidirectional output, which is used to output data to the printer. EPP mode (Extended Parallel Port): This mode supports high-speed (up to 2Mb / s) bidirectional transmission of data, and can address multiple (2 5 6) devices. ECP mode (Enhanced Capability Port): Similar to EPP mode, but adds data compression, F I F 0 (cache memory) and other functions.

Page 9 of 1227856 V. Description of the invention (7) Flat b shows 61 (1 丨): 6 (^ 丨 〇1 ^ 1 mode (or 1 ^ 2 mode): In this mode, the port can not only achieve the SPP Function, and through the control register 'U5, the data line can be selected to work in input or output mode: bit5 = 〇, table output, M t 5 2 1 means input. The present invention can use this mode. ^ To be collected External signal, so it is required to set the parallel port to the input state, bit5 = l. '

Although the principle of Pingdabu is not complicated, it is still a problem how to achieve poor material acquisition under the heart. It is not difficult to read the parallel port-shaped separation under the |) 〇 Hongjing, you can use the simple import command of C language, but it is under Dos. User interface | Friendly difficult to do, and currently most of them work in the Windows environment, so we must solve the parallel port data read and write under WIND〇ws Now widely used Windows system can be classified according to basic principles: \ ^ 100 界 898 series And | 10 (^ 82000 series. The former includes WINDOWS9 5/9 8 / ME 'WUDxS-NT / 2 0 0 / XP using VxD for low-level operations, and techniques required for low-level operations ^^ 实 # Now, the two technologies are completely different in concrete implementation, and the principles are the same. 彳-their original

WINDOWS system's protection of hardware and port 1 / 〇 is realized through ". 丨 L column 丨: ^ mode mechanism '

Spoon red can be frozen, you must make the program run at RING_ weight level. The wDM tool is at the level of RING0. In this state, you can perform any operation on the system as in DO, but the switching of privilege levels requires CPU time, which seriously affects the reading speed of port data. Cause information ^

1227856

V. Description of the invention (8) The present invention needs to work at level 10 until the signal is collected! : The characteristics of the two Π signal collection are that the digits of a certain collection point are continuous. 1 However WINDQws is a multiplexing system and mechanism. = tRI_Other programs' must also observe the thread scheduling data. = This may happen: the program is reading from the parallel port, and one system is switched to other threads by the system. The shell material is lost. And how to turn off the system's thread scheduling, force, force = == surgery: segment to achieve, but we can analyze the system;: 程 = 二 ΐ: ί is obviously based on the PC system clock and interrupt system, as long as you turn off 糸If the system is interrupted, the thread switching function can be masked. From the above analysis, we know that during the data acquisition period, the present invention shuts down the system to prevent data loss, but this brings a problem. Where is the collected data stored? If you apply for a piece of memory according to the general programming method, due to the mechanism of the virtual memory of the Windows system, the applied memory may not be actually in the ram. It may be in the exchange file. Disk operation, but the system interruption has been turned off, and the hard disk interruption cannot respond, so-> ', obviously the system will crash. Therefore, we must use the 1 丨 11 (1〇 ”function: new (N0nPagedPool) UCHAR [bufsize] to assign the RA Μ to the bufsize byte, and ensure that it will not be swapped to the hard disk. This way we The collected lean material can be stored in this buffer and will not trigger the operation of the hard disk.

1227856 V. Description of the invention Because of this, only the 1½ level of the condition shown at the end is indicated in the material. The problem of storing digital signals is simple. Since the ratio of as many materials as possible is 0 or shape / data, the results of proportion drawing are more serious than 1: 2. According to (9) during the material acquisition process, if only one of the parallel ports is simply recorded, Then the data is useless, because the user who cannot control the collection must set the trigger of data acquisition in the interface and start recording the tribute when the conditions are met, so that the most important data the user really needs can be guaranteed. Please refer to Figure 6 for the trigger interface diagram. Select 0 for low-level trigger, 1 for table trigger, and X for arbitrary level trigger. Therefore, as shown in the figure, channel 0 is low and channel 1 is high. When the level is set, the data collected in the storage area starts to be collected, or the collected data is pure, that is, 0 or 1, so here does not involve signal amplification or reduction. Need to convert the data according to the preset display ratio? Digital Wave The amount of data collected at one time may be relatively large. In order to observe the data, the user wants to zoom the displayed waveform. The situation where the graph / data is greater than 1: 1 is relatively simple, as long as for each data, [, repeatedly display the same data several times. However, for the case where the ratio of the figure to 1 ·· 1 cannot be taken, the method of taking part of the tribute from the original data and displaying it inconspicuously cannot be adopted. Because this will cause obvious wave distortion, misleading users to make wrong logic analysis. For example: the comparative example 'assumes the following lean material sequence · 001101011000' such as the wrong method, we will take the 1, 3, 5, 7 data in the sequence for display, then the data will become 〇1 〇〇1 〇 waveform display will Will this in this case should still be taken with graphics / data greater than 1: 1

1227856 Fifth, the invention description (ίο) of the same proportion. The invention can be applied to the testing of various hardware systems. For example, during the development of some projects, it is necessary to accurately understand the output signals of the computer CRT interface, mainly the specific waveforms of the line synchronization signal and the field synchronization signal and their timing relationship. By using the present invention, the data signals of the CRT interface can be collected and then analyzed. As shown in FIG. 7, Channe 10 is a line synchronization pulse, and C ha η ne 1 1 is a field synchronization pulse. For another example, if an error occurs in the serial communication program of a single board computer, it is very troublesome to find out the reason, because it may be a problem with the serial port setting, it may be a line disconnection, or it may be a serial transmission rate. Match, or even the serial equipment is damaged, it is necessary to collect the data signals of the serial equipment, observe the signal waveform on the line, and quickly determine the cause of the failure. We know that the normal state of the serial port line is high, and the start bit is represented by 0 when sending data. In order to capture valid data on the serial port data line, you can set the corresponding capture trigger conditions, such as Section 8-1 As shown in the figure, the waveform of the serial port sent data collected with this setting is shown in Figure 8-2. According to the analysis of the serial port protocol, the data is 0x55, Oxaa. The above are only the preferred embodiments of the present invention, and are not intended to limit the scope of implementation of the present invention; that is, all equivalent changes and modifications made in accordance with the scope of the patent application for this creation are covered by the scope of the creation patent .

1227856 on page 13 Brief description of the diagram Figure 1: This is a flowchart of the method of displaying the data signal waveform of the present invention; Figure 2: This is a flowchart of the method of collecting the data signal of the present invention; Figure 3: This is Module structure of the waveform display system of the data signal of the invention J], FIG. 4 is a block diagram of the data signal acquisition system module of the invention; FIG. 5 is a schematic diagram of the parallel port interface of the invention; Figure 6: Schematic diagram of the triggering condition configuration interface provided by the present invention; Figure 7: The application of the present invention to collect the data signal display of the CRT interface shows the schematic diagram of the material route triggering the capture of the original application should be Figure 1X I; Figure 8 shows the signal line of the tangential wave. The material route is to capture the clear hair. The application should be • · ο and Figure 2 •. Intent 8 indicates the display of the material from the beginning of the display. And the numerical reference shows η to show t L set to say S # 符 1 ο Formula 1 Figure t t step step step step step by step step by step material information display the amount of material to be a total of the material to read the area display material information can be determined from the set Number of parameters According to the data display, the data display will be based on the data display. The data display will be based on the number of road materials. The number of digits is the number of steps to change the material. Display step-by-step display of stoppages and continuous shipments. Total port contact information. Collected brain and display of electricity. Display and acquisition can obtain the hard material.

Page 14 1227856 Schematic description step 2 0 3 space step 204 step 2 0 5 data step 2 0 6 to full step 2 0 7 step 2 0 8 allocate the corresponding amount of memory mask operation from the kernel according to the amount of data acquired The system's multi-thread switching function continuously reads in the hardware under test from the communication port according to the acquisition trigger conditions and stores the collected data into the memory space allocated by the kernel. The multi-thread switching function of the operating system restores the collected data from The memory space allocated by the kernel is transferred to the lean storage area Step 2 0 9 The memory space allocated by the kernel is released 3 0 1 parameter acquisition module 3 0 3 data reading module 3 0 5 data display module 4 0 2 Mask control module 4 0 4 Acquisition module 3 0 2 Total calculation module 3 0 4 Data separation module 401 Communication port interface device 4 0 3 Configuration module 4 0 5 Storage module

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Claims (1)

1227856 VI. Application for Patent Scope 1. A waveform display method of data signals for displaying the collected data signals through a computer monitor. The method includes: determining display parameters and the starting position of the currently displayed data; determining according to the display parameters The total amount of data that can be displayed; read a data to be displayed from the data area according to the starting position of the data; separate the data into independent values of 8 data channels; convert the data of each channel into a digital waveform according to the display parameters; And stop displaying when the total amount of displayable data is reached. 2. The waveform display method of the data signal as described in item 1 of the scope of patent application, wherein the display parameters include: the current resolution of the display and the graphic / data display ratio set by the user. 3. The waveform display method of the data signal as described in item 1 of the scope of patent application, wherein the step of reading a data to be displayed from the data area is from the hard disk storage area. 4. The waveform display method of the data signal as described in item 1 of the scope of patent application, wherein the step of reading a data to be displayed from the data area is to read from the data storage area of the application program. 5. The waveform display method of the data signal as described in item 1 of the scope of patent application, which further includes a data acquisition process, including: connecting the hardware under test to a computer communication port; setting the data acquisition amount and acquisition trigger conditions; The data acquisition amount allocates a corresponding amount of memory space from the kernel; the multi-thread switching function of the mask operating system; continuously reads in the hardware data to be tested from the communication port according to the acquisition trigger condition; Page 16 1227856 VI. Patent application scope Store the collected data into the memory space allocated by the kernel until it is full; restore the multi-thread switching function of the operating system; transfer the collected data from the memory space allocated by the kernel Data storage benefits, and free up memory space allocated by the kernel. 6. The waveform display method of the data signal as described in item 5 of the scope of patent application, wherein the step of the multi-thread switching function of the mask / recovery operating system is realized by shutting down / restarting the system interrupt. 7. A waveform display system for data signals, which is used to display the collected data signals through a computer monitor. The system includes: a parameter collection module to collect display parameters; a total amount calculation module to use the display parameters Calculate the total amount of data that can be displayed; The data reading module is used to read the data to be displayed from the data area; the lean material separation board group is used to separate the pre-displayed materials into 8 tribute materials. Independent values of channels; and a data display module for converting the independent values of each channel into a digital waveform. 8. The waveform display system of the data signal as described in item 7 of the scope of patent application, wherein the display parameters include the current resolution of the display and the graphic / data display ratio set by the user. 9. The waveform display system of the data signal as described in item 7 of the scope of patent application, which further includes a signal acquisition device, including: a communication port interface device for connecting the hardware under test and transmitting test data; Page 17 1227856 VI. Scope of patent application-mask control module conversion function; 酉 have set up a collection-storage 10. If the system, it stores the collection group. 1 1. If the system, it is at the communication signal terminal 1 2. If the system ’s, it matches the module, module, and module to be applied for the information of the application. The general test hardware used in the application school is used to set the output power set for collecting and loading materials according to the number of storage areas and the interface between the fabric line of the area and the interface of the area. Cover or recover the multi-threaded data acquisition and recovery trigger conditions of the operating system; collect trigger conditions to collect data; and data collected by the acquisition module. The waveform display system of the data signal described in item 9 further includes a temporary storage module for transferring temporary data into the storage module after the recovery of the temporary storage mask. The waveform display system of the data signal described in item 9 includes: A signal transmission line, one end of the connection line, and the other end of the waveform display system of the data signal described in the corresponding 9 items of the hardware system under test also include a voltage conversion circuit for voltage and external input voltage of the communication port. ◦ 〇 Page 18