POEM Stepper Organizer calling interface

Dialog

There are two types of dialog:

1.	String Mode - by simple ASCII string with Command as letter (or word where only first letter is significant) and numerical Parameters separated by comma (Also can be Remark separated by semicolon). Example 1: Set current position of Y to 100: P,100 or P ,100,, or Position ,100 ; Set current position of Y to 100 Example 2: Set Output 0 to High and Output 3 to Low: O 1,,,0 or Output 1,,,0 ; Set Output 0 to High and Output 3 to Low, Other unchanged Returns numerical Parameters separated by comma. Note 1: Each string is only one command. Note 2: It is possible to type numerical Parameters also in hex form. I.e. instead of decimal 100 may be: $64 or 64h or 0x64.
2.	Direct Mode - by sending computer internal type data (Fast way). This data structure described by type PoemAr: In Pascal: type PoemRec=record Present:boolean; Value:longint; End; type PoemAr=array[0..4] of PoemRec; In C: typedef struct { char Present; long Value; } PoemRec; typedef PoemRec PoemAr[5]; Command definition is PoemAr[0]. Parameters is PoemAr[1] to PoemAr[4]. To call set PoemAr[0].Present to true (1), PoemAr[0].Value to Command Number. Example: Set Current position of Y to 100: PoemAr[0].Present:=true; PoemAr[0].Value:=10; PoemAr[1].Present:=false; PoemAr[2].Present:=true; PoemAr[2].Value:=100; PoemAr[3].Present:=false; PoemAr[4].Present:=false; Returns answer in the same form but (if connection with driver OK) sets PoemAr[0].Present to false (0) and PoemAr[0].Value to 1112098124.

Dialog type defined by DealType parameter.

	If	DealType	is	0 to	31:	this is a String Mode with ASCII string terminated by DealType character. I.e. for C Language string (ASCIIZ) DealType=0.
	If	DealType	is	32:		this is a String Mode with string where first byte describing string length (Pascal string, LString).
	If	DealType	is	255:		this is a Direct Mode.

In case of multidriver usage (more than one Poem driver at the same time) the suggestion is to switch between drivers by '*' Command in String Mode or Command Number 99 in Direct Mode. It depends on Your sotware but...

DOS Interface

Provided by call to resident POEM.EXE through INT 17H.

In Assembler:

	push es
	push di
	push ax
	push ds
	pop es
	lea di,offset PoemData	; es:di	- points to PoemData
	mov al,DealType	; al	- defines Dialog type
	mov ah,0e0h+AddFnc	; ah	- selects Driver Number
	int 17h
	pop ax
	pop di
	pop es

Windows Interface

Provided by calling PoemDeal procedure in POEMxx.DLL.

PoemDeal (DealType : char; PointIn, PointOut : pointer);

Note: Multidriving in Windows provided by renaming/relocating DLLs.

© Aryeh Eiderman <leib@inter.net.il>