The hardware used in the current configuration is described in one of sections of the Lap_sys.ini file. The name (name) of this section is in the section [general], entry hardware=name. In the Lap_sys.ini file there can be any number of configurations described in sections with different names. The list of these configurations is kept in the [hardware] section and is displayed on the hardware configuration list on the Hardware form. The section [name] contains a list of entries describing each element of the hardware, e.g., the entry: temperature controller=LakeShore330 says that the current controller type is LakeShore330 and the current controller configuration is defined by the entry: temperature controller active=contr_config. As a result, the start-up parameters for the temperature controller used in this configuration are stored in the section [contr_config]. Basically, there should be no need to edit this file directly as the hardware configuration is defined by using a utility provided on the Hardware form (see Configuring the system hardware for details).
In this file the current and other possible hardware configurations with a list of users and their configuration lists are stored. This file has a tree-structure, i.e., some entries in sections are pointers to other sections. This is illustrated by the following example of the hardware configuration:
[general]
hardware=our_place
[our_place]
A/D=our_converter
capacitance meter=our_meter
[our_meter]
full scale output=3
top range=3000
[our_converter]
input voltage=5
A similar tree structure is used for registering different users and different configuration files for the given user. The Lap_sys.ini file has to be in the same directory as the main application.