20010601: decoding model output data in McIDAS (cont.)

>From: "Wayne Bresky" <address@hidden>
>Organization: Cornell
>Keywords: 200105161402.f4GE2Jp07535 ADDE

Wayne,

>I sure hope you are well compensated for your hard work!  :-)

Thanks!

>I'm not surprised to hear that the problem was INGEBIN.
>I started looking yesterday at the program itself just to see
>what it was doing.

It is pretty simple minded.  It reads from a serial port or stream
(stdin) and writes to a spool file (HRS.SPL in this case).

>Anyway, I see the grids coming in.  Thank you so much.

You are welcome.

>How do I configure which model data I want?

This is a little involved in that several things come into play:

o what data is being received (this is obvious, but these comments get
  included in our inquiry tracking system, so I try to be as complete
  as possible with explanations in the hopes that the next person with
  a problem can use this answer as a stepping stone)

o how one configures NOGRIB.CFG

The concept in McIDAS is to decode ALL model data being written to the
spool file that is maintained by ingebin.k.  In order to _not_ decode
some data, one can either resort to LDM controls (i.e., request a
subset of all of the model data to be received by the LDM), or by
telling XCD to _not_ decode certain grids.

The file NOGRIB.CFG is read by DMGRID to see which grids to not
decode.  The top of the file explains the various pieces of lines
contained at the end of the file.  In order to really control which
grids are decoded, one has to become familar with what grids are
possible.  I will let you read through NOGRIB.CFG (gets installed in
~mcidas/workdata) and see if you have questions about what you either
want or don't want.  We can go from there.

>I don't know how Jim compiled the McIDAS software without
>the f2c compiler.  That is a mystery.  I do see mcfc, but I assume
>that just calls f2c.

Yes, mcfc is a shell script that runs f2c and then gcc.  It is designed
to look like a Fortran compiler so that it is easy to simply use
gcc/f2c for builds.  One quick word of caution: the GNU Fortran routine
g77 can NOT be used to build McIDAS.  I have tried on numerous
occasions to get this working, but I have run into problems that I have
not yet overcome.  I will make yet another attempt for the 7.8
distribution.

Tom