Platform driver and series differences

General Information

All Spectrum products are operating by one of two different generic platform drivers. All API programming is independant of the specific card that is used and only differs for the available settings as long as it's based on the same platform driver. Examples can be easily ported within the platform driver and new hardware is supported without big development efforts.

The platform driver relates to the base card family what is shown with the two or three digits at the beginning of each product name and is independent of the four digit product code itself. Examples:

• M2i.4911-exp is based on M2i series
• MX.4911 is based on MX series
• DN2.465-04 is based on DN2 series

SPCM driver

The SPCM platform driver was released in 2002 for the M2i series of base cards. The SPCM driver is still used and all new base product series are using this driver. The SPCM driver covers the following product series:

• M2p.xxxx-x4 (PCI Express based)
• M2i.xxxx (PCI/PCI-X based)
• M2i.xxxx-exp (PCI Express based)
• M3i.xxxx (PCI/PCI-X based)
• M3i.xxxx-exp (PCI Express based)
• M4i.xxxx-x8 (PCI Express based)
• M4x.xxxx-x4 (PXI Express based)
• M5i.xxxx-x16 (PCI Express based)
• DN2.xxxx-xxx (Ethernet/LXI based)
• DN6.xxxx-xxx (Ethernet/LXI based)

MICX driver

The MICX platform driver was the prior platform driver and covers all base card series that have been released before 2002. Please note that also products that have been released later than that date are based on this driver as long as the product is based on one of the card series:

• MX.xxxx (PXI based)
• MC.xxxx (cPCI based)
• MI.xxxx (PCI based, precessor of M2i series)
• PCI.xxx (PCI based)
• PAD.xxxx (ISA based)
• DAP.xxxx (ISA based)