[evlatests] VisPipe/IDCAF testing

[Pete Whiteis]

    Several hours were spent today testing IDCAF->Vispipe processor 
interactions.   

Briefly:

- During continuum mode, life is good for both IDCAF and Vispipe.  
Startups and shutdowns from both ends seem to work quickly and reliably. 

- Spectral line modes require a little more time for things to get 
organized when a client disconnects/reconnects to Vispipe.   Sometimes 
this can take up to 2.5 minutes.   The reason for this is that the Array 
Processor device driver interface shuts down and has to restart.  The 
results in both the driver resyncing to the data stream and the user 
application resyncing to the driver.      For the time being, this means 
that client connecting in to vispipe will need to exercise patience.     
In the longer term, some re-organization of the vispipe processor 
application may help to reduce re-sync time. 

- Sometimes mode changes result in unusual behavior, such as an 
inexplicable change in data transfer periods, or data size.  This can 
cause client software frustration, but nothing more severe.

- For system debug black-belts:  1 visapp process means no-one has 
connected to the vispipe app.   2 visapp processes indicates that a 
client task was formerly connected to vispipe app, but has since 
disconnected.  3 visapp processes indicates that a client has 
successfully connected and is either receiving data or waiting for 
vispipe app to re-sync.  

- Walter found and fixed a couple instances of undesirable behavior in 
IDCAF.   I'll let him speak to this. 


-Pete-
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