FarSync BERT

FarSync BERT - Command Line Mode

As well as running the FarSync BERT in its standard GUI mode (where the BERT is depicted graphically), you can alternatively use it in Command Line Mode. The same BERT engine, BertClient.exe, is used for both modes.

To run the BERT in script mode, start a command prompt and run %FSBERTPATH%\bertclient.

To see a list of available command line options, run BertClient with the command line parameter ? as shown below:

BertClient Usage

When using the BertClient in the Command Line Mode the Enable Data Logging (+l) option can be used to log more detailed information compared to what is output to the terminal.

Note that when specifying test patterns (-t) containing a ^, (i.e. 2^15), you might have to use two ^^ (i.e. 2^^15), as a single one can be stripped out by the environment. Using double quotes should also work (i.e. –t”2^15”).

Hardware Mode

The Hardware Mode is the default mode when running the FarSync BERT from the GUI, and it’s the same case when running the BertClient from the command line. An example of the BertClient running in Hardware Mode is shown below.

BERT Command Line - Hardware Mode

where:

-c0   		use card 0
-mSYNC 		use synchronous
-iX.21 		use X.21 interface
-k1024000 	use 1Meg linespeed
-t2047 		use pattern 2047
-l2048000  	terminate test when 2Mbits have been received

In Hardware Mode, the test status is updated once every second.

Software Mode

To run the BertClient in Software Mode, use the +S option on the command line. Here the option to stop the test on the first detected error (-s) has also been specified.

Command Line Software Mode Stop On Error

where:

-c0   		use card 0
-mSYNC 		use synchronous
-iX.21 		use X.21 interface
-k1024000 	use 1Meg linespeed
-t2047 		use pattern 2047
-l2048000  	terminate test when 2Mbits have been received
+S   		use software mode
-s     		terminate the test on the first detected error following synchronisation

In the software mode, the status output is updated approximately twice a second.

Multi-Drop Mode

Each instance of the BertClient can implement either a master node or a slave node. It is recommended that each of the slave nodes on the network are implemented using the BertClient’s Command Line Mode.

The command line for a typical slave node is shown below:

Command Line - Multi-Drop Slave

where:

-c4   		use card 4
-iRS485-4W	use interface RS485 4-Wire
-nMAN		use Manchester encoding
-k512000		use 512k linespeed
+Ms1 		perform the Multi-Drop test using Slave Id 1

Each instance of the BertClient slave should be started before the BertClient master is started. Care should be taken to ensure that the interface, encoding and linespeed match the values selected on the BertClient master.

The BertClient slave is terminated using Ctrl-C.

The BertClient master can also be run from the command line (although it is recommended to use the GUI mode). An example of running an instance of a BertClient master from the command line is shown below:

Command Line - Multi-Drop Master

where:

-c2   		use card 2
-iRS485-4W	use interface RS485 4-Wire
-nMAN		use Manchester encoding
-k512000		use 512k linespeed
-S60 		allow 60 seconds for all slaves to synchronise
-L60 		run the test for 60 seconds after all slaves being polled have synchronised
+Mm1.3 		perform Multi-Drop test as master, poll slaves 1,2,3 (the dot, denotes a range)

In this example, slaves 2 and 3 weren’t active, and +q (poll quiet slaves) wasn’t specified. The output shows that slaves 2 and 3 returned No Data as expected, and so were dropped from the poll list. Slave 1 achieved sync and as the test progressed, its AS count increased as expected.

For the BertClient master, if the +l option was specified, the results would also have been written to the log file.

RTD Mode

The Round Trip Delay test is implemented using the command line parameter +R. An example of the Round Trip Delay test in Command Line Mode is shown below.

Command Line - Round Trip Delay

where:

-c0   		use card 0
-mSYNC		use synchronous
-iX.21		use X.21 interface
-k9600		9600bps linespeed
-L10  		run the test for 60 seconds after all slaves being polled have synchronised
+R    		perform Round Trip Delay test
+r100		receive packet timeout of 100ms/
+t0   		zero transmit delay/
+d10		use 10 byte payload length/

The status output is updated twice a second.

Script Files

To run a series of tests, a script/batch file can be used to automate the process. The script/batch file can be run from a Windows command line prompt by simply typing the name of the batch file. An example script/batch file is shown below:

Example Script File

Note the use of the -s command line parameter used in the script/batch file. This makes the test terminate as soon as an error is detected which is normally desirable when running in script mode.

Details of how to use the FarSync BERT API from your applications can be found here

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