Getting Started with VAXlab

This document serves as an introductory guide to the VAXlab system and its associated Software Library (VSL), primarily for scientists and engineers. It is divided into three main chapters covering the system's overview, management, and program development.

Overview of the VAXlab System and Software Library: The VAXlab system integrates both hardware and software, with the VAXlab Software Library (VSL) as its core. VSL offers a comprehensive suite of subroutines for real-time I/O operations, mathematical and statistical analysis, signal processing, peak processing, and graphical plotting. It also includes interactive, menu-driven utilities for system management and data acquisition. The document lists various VAX processors compatible with VAXlab and details essential and optional hardware components. Software components include VAX GKS for graphics and the VSL application software, further broken down into tools like the Manager Utility, Laboratory I/O Routines (LIO), Interactive Data Acquisition Tool (IDAT), Laboratory Signal-Processing Routines (LSP), Mathematics and Statistics Routines, Peak-Processing Routine, and Laboratory Graphics Package (LGP).

VAXlab System Management: This section focuses on planning, maintaining, and monitoring the VAXlab system. It introduces the Manager Utility, a menu-driven interface simplifying common system management tasks for users unfamiliar with DCL commands. These tasks, typically performed from a SYSTEM or privileged account, include adding, displaying, modifying, and deleting user accounts; managing print and batch queues (setting up, restarting, stopping, deleting, showing status); configuring and managing DECnet nodes (adding, removing, turning on/off, listing); device management (mounting, initializing, dismounting, allocating, deallocating, showing status); and maintenance utilities like backup and restore.

Program Development: The final section guides users through creating, compiling, linking, and executing application programs using the VSL on a VAXlab system. It provides language-specific information for VAX Ada, VAX BASIC, VAX C, VAX FORTRAN, and VAX PASCAL. Key programming considerations covered include incorporating symbolic definition files, declaring data types, variables, and arrays, declaring external routines, defaulting routine call arguments, checking routine call status, and utilizing Asynchronous System Trap (AST) routines. The document also explains how to access online sample programs shipped with the VSL software.