Read Me

--- ReadMe for WinSGL binary distribution ---


1. Introduction
===============

This document gives brief instructions on installing and using the binary distribution of WinSGL. For detailled instructions refer to the semester thesis available on the project website at SourceForge.


2. Installation
===============

2.1. WinSGL Driver
------------------

Since the driver does not correspond to an actual hardware device it needs to be installed manually such that a device instance is created and the driver is loaded when Windows boots.

2.1.1. Installation of Driver and Creation of Device Instance

The following instructions refer to Windows XP. Other versions of Windows can have a slightly different procedure for installing a driver manually.

 1) Open the "Add Hardware" wizard from the Control Panel
 2) Click "Next"
 3) Select "Yes, I have already connected the hardware" and click "Next" (Note that it is not necessary that the parallel sync cable is connected at this time)
 4) From the list of hardware devices, choose "Add a new hardware device" at the bottom and click "Next"
 5) Select "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" and click "Next"
 6) Select "Show All Devices" and click "Next"
 7) Click "Have Disk..." and select the sglreads.inf file in the file dialog that opens
 8) Select "SoftGenLock Read Sync Driver" from the list of devices (usually it is the only entry unless you copied some other .inf files into the same directory) and click "Next"
 9) Click "Next" again to confirm driver installtion
10) In the warning dialog about the missing Windows Logo test, click "Continue Anyway"
11) When installation has completed, click "Finish"

2.1.2. Driver Configuration

By default, the driver will use the parallel port device \Device\ParallelPort0, which refers to the first parallel port ("LPT1") in the system. If this is fine, you can skip this section and go to "Parallel Port Configuration".
If you want to change which parallel port the WinSGL driver uses, change the "Port" value in the registry key

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Enum\Root\UNKNOWN\0000

whereas the number (0000) varies, depending on whether there are other devices of the device category "Unknown" installed.

2.1.3. Parallel Port Configuration

The parallel port driver has to be configured to use interrupts. By default, parallel port devices are set to never use an interrupt. Through the device manager, the properties of the parallel port can be accessed and the use of an interrupt can be enabled by selecting "Use any interrupt assigned to the port" in the Port Settings tab.
Furthermore, you have to check whether interrupts for the parallel port are enabled in the BIOS as well.


2.2. PowerStrip
---------------

PowerStrip is not included in the binary distribution of WinSGL. It is available from http://www.entechtaiwan.com/util/ps.shtm and installation is straightforward.


2.3. WinSGL Application
-----------------------

Simply copy the executable "sgl.exe" to a convenient place.



3. Usage
--------

sgl.exe is a console application and thus should be started from a command line interpreter. It reads command line parameters when starting up and writes informational output to the console. The command line parameters are described briefly in the following section. For more detailled information and information about the output of the program, refer to the semester thesis available on the project website at SourceForge.

3.1. Command Line Parameters
----------------------------

All command line parameters have to be specified. If some are missing or cannot be parsed successfully, default values will be used. This will be indictated in the output. The four command line parameters are:

- poll_every_nth_own_sync: how often the application should wake up and compare the external signal with the local video signal
- threshold: the threshold for the deviation [Ás]
- shift: add a shift to the signal [Ás]
- min_diff_to_reference: the minimum difference of the fast and the slow timing to the external reference clock [Ás]

For maximum genlocking precision and no shift, "1 0 0 1" should be used.