|
Home Page >
FAQ Index >
General Answers
This page contains answers to frequently asked questions about our
company and products.
For a list of the questions, please return to the main
FAQ Index
page. If you still have questions after reading this page,
email them to info@symres.com
and we'll be glad to answer them for you.
Q: How much does it cost ?
The prices of our products are shown on the
Catalog & Prices
page. Please refer to this page for all current pricing. Shipping charges
and international export fees are additional and depend on the carrier,
destination, etc. Please see our
How To Order page.
Each product comes with the basic software, cables, etc that it needs
to work with your PC. Generally there will be no hidden costs. The
product will be ready to work "out of the box".
Q: How do I get the cash discount ?
Customers who pay with cash, prepay by check or wire transfer, or who
have gone through credit approval and pay on a NET 30 account will
receive a 4% discount from the list price. Customers who pay with
credit card are not eligible.
Please see our
How To Order page for
additional details.
Q: Do you sell to international customers ?
Yes. We are pleased to have customers all over the world.
The prices of our products are shown in US dollars on the
Catalog & Prices
page and are the same for all customers.
Please refer to this page for current pricing.
Shipping charges are additional and will likely be higher because
you are further away.
You will also have to pay any duties and taxes imposed by the customs
department of your country.
Q: What about the difference between 220v and 110v power ?
If your country uses 220v or 230v power instead of the US standard 110v,
please let us know at the time of your order and we will be happy to
substitute a 220v wall transformer with continental European plugs for
any US 110v style wall transformer at no additional
cost.
You can also provide your own wall transformer instead as long as it
meets the product power requirements described in the General Data Acquisition
FAQ "Do your A/D products work with European 220 vac power sources ?"
Q: How do I order ?
You can order by phone, fax, or email. Please see our
How To Order page for details.
Q: Can I purchase it on my credit card ?
We accept the major credit cards: MasterCard and Visa. Credit cards
are particularly convenient for international purchases as the credit
card company automatically takes care of all currency conversion.
Q: What is your address, phone, fax, etc ?
All our contact information is listed on our
Contact Us page.
Q: Can you send me complete specs ?
We prefer to distribute information via the web. You can find
extensive information by following the links from our
Catalog & Prices page.
Feature lists, manuals, and software descriptions are available
for each product.
In addition, many board level specs such as A/D
resolution match the specs of the individual components. Component
data sheets are available from the
Third Party Component Specs page.
If you still have questions after reviewing the online material, we will
be happy to answer them for you. Just send email to info@symres.com
or call us at (702)341-9325.
Q: Do you have any Application Notes ?
Yes. SR Application Notes typically include both a Adobe PDF
document and related zipped source code files. These files are
located on our Downloads page.
Q: How do I get a copy of the circuit diagrams ?
When purchasing a SR product, you will receive a PDF manual
and circuit diagrams. The manuals are available for free from our
Downloads page,
but the circuit diagrams are NOT as they are reserved for our
existing customers.
Current customers who need another copy of the circuit diagrams can
get them by sending email to info@symres.com. Our technical
support staff is also happy to answer questions from potential
customers with circuit related concerns.
Q: What is your ROHS and WEEE status ?
RoHS and WEEE are acronyms for some environmental legislation enacted
by the European Union. RoHS refers to the Reduction of certain Hazardous
Substances directive and WEEE refers to the Waste Electrical and Electronic
Equipment directive.
The RoHS directive attempts to limit the following six substances:
lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls
(PBB), and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE), while the WEEE
directive focuses on the disposition of discarded equipment.
For the purposes of these directives, products are divided up into 10
broad categories. We believe all SR products belong to category 9,
monitoring and control instruments.
Many of the individual components on our circuit boards are fully RoHS
compliant. But, in order to achieve high levels of reliability, all
our circuit boards use solder containing lead. However, category 9
products are exempt from the RoHS directive. So all SR products can
be considered RoHS "compliant by exemption".
We expect all SR equipment to run reliably for many, many years. Most
customers will probably find it easiest to eventually dispose of any
unwanted equipment themselves. But if you prefer, you can pay to send
old SR equipment back to us for disposal. Please contact us to obtain
the proper WEEE return authorization and shipping address.
Q: Do your products have any digital input/output capabilities ?
Our PARxCH 1/4/8 channel 24 bit A/D systems have four digital input
bits and four digital output bits for general use. The output bits
are latched while the input bits are polled. On the PAR8CH, the input
bits are also sampled automatically in step with the analog data. The
boards also have a user programmable LED for visual feedback. These
bits are intended for general purpose control applications of external
equipment in conjunction with analog data acquisition.
Our PAR24B 8 channel 24 bit A/D system has eight digital output bits
and no input bits. The output bits are latched. Like the PARxCH,
the system also has a user programmable LED for visual feedback.
Our DSPSMT and DSPMOD boards feature a high speed 32 bit
parallel port. This port is capable of reading or writing 32 bit
words at the rate of 12.5MHz, (ie a 50 MB/sec IO bandwidth).
These boards are ideal for anyone who needs
to do buffered high speed digital IO with the PC.
For users only needing very simple digital IO, we recommend the PC
parallel port. The programming is very simple, and nearly every PC
has a parallel port. Multiple parallel ports can be
installed on a single PC if needed. You can download a free demo
program, setport.exe, from the Downloads
page of our site to get started.
Q: Do you include source code with your software ?
You get all the source code for our software. This includes the
kernel mode drivers and GUI applications. The latest version is
also available for free from our Downloads page.
In an effort to simplify the distribution and maintenance, the same
source code files are used for all OS's with platform differences
being handled by conditional compilation in a few sections of the
code.
Q: What Operating Systems do you support (Linux, NT, etc) ?
Our standard software distributions come compiled for
Windows 2K/XP and Linux. The PARxCH A/D's also include DOS
software. The software for the protected mode OS's, such as WinXP and
Linux, have true ring 0 kernel mode drivers for best performance and
integration.
Q: What compilers can I use with your software ?
We compile our code with the Microsoft Visual C++ compilers on
Windows machines and with the GNU gcc compiler on Linux machines.
Our core libraries are also supplied in 32 bit DLL format for users
wishing to use dynamic linking. Even though static linking is
generally the best match for software involving our products, the
DLL's provide a way for almost any user from any language to access
our core libraries. For example, Borland users can easily access our
DLL libraries without having to recompile.
Q: What is a DLL ?
Consider a function like printf. Traditionally "run time" functions
like printf have been statically linked in with an executable. That
means every .exe application has its own duplicated copy of printf.
And, since nearly every executable uses run time functions, there are
a lot of copies of printf running around on the hard disk.
In an effort to save disk space, dynamic linking was introduced. The
idea is to have only one copy of the executable for printf saved in a
file. A .dll file in Windows terminology, or a .so shared object
file under Linux, etc. Applications would fetch a copy of printf on
an as needed basis at run time from this file. Thus saving having
multiple copies of printf on the disk.
Despite the initial appeal of DLL's, they have given the industry a
lot of maintenance trouble. Suppose someone writes a new improved
version of printf. Do you then require two DLL files on your hard
disk? And how will applications know which one to use? And worst of
all, what happens if an application can't find a particular DLL it
needs. We've come to like static linking for our applications, and
try to use it when possible.
Q: What is a device driver ?
Life was simple under DOS. Everyone had access to all the machine
resources. Anyone could execute any instruction. Hardware relies on
low level instructions like in and out. And you could easily write
software that accessed it from "user space". Of course the downside
was that any application could compromise the security of the machine by
making unauthorized disk accesses etc.
Protected mode operating systems like Win2K and Linux protect system
security by NOT allowing most users to directly access low level
instructions like in and out. Hardware in and out instructions can
only be accessed from low level "ring 0" kernel mode device drivers.
Under protected mode OS's, the device driver is a piece of software
that must be installed by the system administrator. Once installed,
"user space" programs can access it by calling functions in our
provided libraries. The device driver software architecture goes a
long way to preserving system integrity.
We provide two easy to use command line utilities for installing and
removing the device drivers for our various products. They are
called indriver and rmdriver. See the readme.txt notes that
came with your product for more information.
Return to the
FAQ Index
for links to more answers.
|
