M6600 Memory Card Duplicator Manual

THE M6600 BASIC OPERATION: LCD AND KEYPAD

M6600-MASTER SLICE

3

ETHERNET

5 PORT SW

K V M

4 X 4

KVM

ETHERNET

M6600- SLICE 2

KVM

ETHERNET

M6600- SLICE 3

KVM

ETHERNET

3

3

4 X 1

4 X 3

L C D DISPLAY

M6600- SLICE 4

3

KEYBOARD M

KVM

ETHERNET

Figure 1-2 M6000 Four Slice Architecture

1.1 M6600 Architecture and Basic Operation

As shown in Figure 1-2, the M6600 is made from multiple computers networked together thru a high speed Ethernet switch. Each M6600 Slice is assigned a static IP address that is kept in a file on the M6600 Master Slice (“\home\m6000\config\config.ini”). After starting each of the

M6600 Slices, the user starts the M66W GUI program on the Master Slice. The M66W program connects to all the other slices using the assigned Ethernet IP addresses.

Each M6600 is a full-featured Linux computer with 512M RAM, a 160 GIG hard drive and a

10/100 Ethernet Port. Upon boot up, Suse Linux version 2.6 is executed on each Slice. The duplicator hardware, on each of the M6600 slices, is controlled by the M6600 Server program

(the “backend software”). The user must start the M6600 Server program on each M6600 Slice using the KVM switch to address each running slice. Once all M6600 Servers are running, the user launches the M66W GUI on the Master slice. The M66W program automatically connects to all M6600 Server programs and the user is ready to launch a M6600 Job file.

All M6600 Job Files are TCL scripts. TCL scripts are text files that execute under an interpreter program called the TCL Interpreter (or “Wish Interpreter”). The M66W program on the Master

Slice launches a TCL interpreter on each M6600 slice. The user then selects a M6600 TCL Job script which when started is executed on each M6600 slice. Each running TCL Job script on the

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THE M6600 BASIC OPERATION: LCD AND KEYPAD

M6600 Slices then provides the communication link between the M66W program running on the

Master Slice and the M6600 Server programs running on each M6600 slice.

M6600 TCL Job

M6600 Master Slice

Wish

M66W GUI M6600 Server

Card Sockets

Network Socket Network Socket

M6600 Slice

M6600 TCL Job

Wish

Interpreter tttt

M6600 Server

Card Sockets

Network Socket

Figure 1-3: M6600 Program Structure

A technical issue that needs to be addressed is the synchronization of the M6600 Job and data files on all M6600 slices. That is, since each slice is an independent computer, when the user selects a M6600 Job file on the M6600 Master Slice, is the same job run on all Slices and do the data file(s) used in the job script reside only on the Master Slice or on all M6600 Slices? The answer is that before a job is executed on the Master Slice, the user must make sure that all other

M6600's to be controlled by the Master Slice have the same job and same data file(s). This is referred to as “Synchronization” and the M66W provides the tools for synchronizing M6600 job and data files.

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