
Chapter 1. First-time Users 1
1. First-time Users
Welcome! This section of the SI7 manual provides an introduction to 7.x drivers and
OPC servers. It is designed to teach you the basic concepts of Intellution drivers and
OPC servers. When you finish learning about these concepts, you can learn how to
get started with the SI7 7.x driver.
Use the following links to learn about driver concepts:
• What is an I/O Driver?
• What is a Channel?
• What is a Device?
• What is a Datablock?
• What is a Timeout?
•How Do Retries Work?
• What is Signal Conditioning?
• What is an Overrun?
What is an I/O Driver?
An I/O driver is software that reads data from your process hardware and makes it
available to your Human-Machine Interface (HMI) software, your historical data
collection software, or your OPC client. By accomplishing this task, I/O drivers
enable you to display process data to your operators.
In order for the driver to communicate properly, you must configure it. Typically,
you configure a driver with a configuration program that allows you to define
information about how your process hardware communicates and the specific data
you want to display to your operators.
Comentarios a estos manuales