Technical Background of Special Bus-Driver Software

A short report discusses the technical background of, and the need for, special bus-driver software for part of a test-bed computer system that is to be used in experimentation for development of advanced avionics. The system features a scalable, fault-tolerant, distributed architecture that incorporates a variety of commercial standard bus interfaces. The special bus-driver software is needed to overcome an incompatibility between (1) a Power PC 750 processor made by a first manufacturer and (2) an IEEE 1394 bus-interface circuit board made by a second manufacturer for use in conjunction with a different version of the Power PC 750 made by a third manufacturer. The hardware-related portions of source code of the driver software of the IEEE 1394 board from the second manufacturer was modified and ported to the power PC 750 processor from the first manufacturer. The source code as thus modified has been found to perform successfully and is now in use in the test bed.