NI-VISA for Windows NT/95/98
Contents
1. 8 Step 1 Detecting an Interrupt 8 Step 2 Acknowledging an Interrupt from Your PXI Device 9 Example 10 Device Manager Settings 11 Complete the PXI Device Registration 13 Using PXI Resources in your VISA Application 13 Resource Manager Operations 13 What Do You Have Your kit contains the following software and documentation Software The VXIplug amp play disks are labeled NI VISA for Windows NT 95 98 Version 2 0 and contain the following software components VISA Dynamic Link Library VISA Microsoft C and Borland C Import Libraries VISA Microsoft Visual Basic Support Files VISA GPIB VXI Component VPP 6 Compliant Windows NT 95 98 Installer The NI VISA software in this kit is compatible with the WIN95 GWIN95 and WINNT GWINNT frameworks the WIN95 GWIN95 frameworks include support for Windows 98 With NI VISA installed on your computer you can run any VXIplug amp play software compatible with these National Instruments Corporation 3 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 frameworks This includ2. Device Classification The category of the device in the Windows Device Manager tree view These settings are cosmetic and do not affect NI VISA s ability to recognize and control your PXI instrument They are provided as a convenience allowing you to more fully customize your instrument driver package NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 12 National Instruments Corporation Refer to Figures 5 and 6 for an example of how these Device Manager settings would appear on your system Figure 5 Model Name and Device Classification Figure 6 Manufacturer Name When you finish entering the Device Manager settings choose Next to continue Device Classification Model Name Manufacturer Name National Instruments Corporation 13 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 Complete the PXI Device Registration To make your PXI device available for use NI VISA must store the previously collected information in the system registry You use the PXI Setup Wizard to specify a Windows Setup Information inf file the operating system can use to configure NI VISA for use with your device You can distribute this file with any PXI application developed with NI VISA Refer to the README TXT file for information on how to incorporate the inf files into your installation package After choosing the format and storage location appropriate for your application choose Finish Note NI VISA cannot locate your PXI device until you have updated your s
3. 2 0 you must register PXI device information using the PXI Setup Wizard Start the PXI Setup Wizard Run VXIpnp os NIVisa PXISWiz EXE to start the PXI Setup Wizard VXIpnp refers to the directory in which you installed NI VISA and os refers to the operating system directory either WinNT or Win95 The wizard first prompts you for basic information NI VISA needs in order to properly locate and create sessions for your PXI instrument Required setup information for PXI instruments includes Instrument Prefix The VXIplug amp play compliant instrument prefix for the device PXI Manufacturer ID This 16 bit value is vendor specific and is unique among PCI based device providers The vendor ID number for National Instruments Corporation for example is 0x1093 PXI Model Code The 16 bit device ID value is device specific defined by the instrument provider and required for PCI based devices Generates interrupts Checking this box informs NI VISA that you wish to use the VISA event handling model in response to hardware interrupts your PXI instrument generates If you check this box the wizard will prompt you for more information in later steps Note In text boxes where numerical information is required preceding the number with 0x informs the wizard that the number entered is a hexadecimal value The wizard assumes all other numeric entries are decimal values When you have finished entering basic d
4. HP UX VxWorks and Macintosh as long as the appropriate system level drivers are available for that platform NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 2 National Instruments Corporation Contents What Do You Have 2 Software 2 Acrobat Online Documentation 3 Utilities 3 Supported Application Development Environments 4 Where Do You Start 4 Step 1 Install LabVIEW and or LabWindows CVI 4 Step 2 Install Your NI VXI NI 488 2 Driver Software 4 Step 3 Install Your NI VISA Software 5 Start the Setup Program 5 Updating the NI VISA Setup 6 Step 4 Check the Read Me File 6 Using NI VISA with PXI 7 Start the PXI Setup Wizard 7 Configure NI VISA for PXI Interrupts
5. earlier utilities such as VXIedit and VISAconf and integrates with the NI DAQ Configuration Utility for VXI DAQ instruments T amp M Explorer also has new features such as an option to run Resource Manager at startup and troubleshooting to guide you through configuration conflicts and errors NI Spy tracks the calls your application makes to National Instruments T amp M drivers including NI VXI NI VISA and NI 488 2 It highlights functions that return errors so you can quickly determine which functions failed during your development NI Spy can also log your program s calls to these drivers so you can check them for errors at your convenience NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 4 National Instruments Corporation For PXI instruments you must register device information with NI VISA See the section Using NI VISA with PXI for information on how to do this along with a description of the PXI functionality NI VISA supports Supported Application Development Environments This release of NI VISA for Windows NT 95 98 supports the following Application Development Environments ADEs LabVIEW version 4 x 5 x LabWindows CVI version 4 x 5 x Borland C C version 4 5 x Microsoft Visual C C version 4 x 5 x 6 x Microsoft Visual Basic version 4 x 5 x Note Although NI VISA has been tested and found to work with these ADEs other ADEs or higher versions of the ADEs listed above may also work W
6. CVI LabVIEW NI 488 2 NI VISA NI VXI and VXIpc are trademarks of National Instruments Corporation Product and company names are trademarks or trade names of their respective companies 321217E 01 Copyright 1996 1998 National Instruments Corp All rights reserved November 1998 READ ME FIRST NI VISA FOR WINDOWS NT 95 98 WINNT GWINNT WIN95 AND GWIN95 FRAMEWORKS NI VISA is a standard I O Application Programming Interface API for instrumentation programming NI VISA can control VXI VME PXI GPIB or Serial instruments making the appropriate driver calls depending on the type of instrument being used NI VISA uses the same operations to communicate with instruments regardless of the interface type For example the NI VISA command to write an ASCII string to a message based instrument is the same whether the instrument is Serial GPIB or VXI As a result NI VISA gives you interface independence This makes it easier to switch bus interfaces and means that users who must program instruments for multiple interfaces need learn only one API Another advantage of NI VISA is that it is an object oriented API that will easily adapt to new instrumentation interfaces as they evolve making application migration to the new interfaces easy VISA is the industry standard for developing instrument drivers Most current drivers written by National Instruments use NI VISA and support Windows NT 95 98 Solaris 2
7. INTEN a generic status register STATUS and an interrupt acknowledge register INTACK The xyzScope maps its register set to BAR0 The registers are defined as follows INTEN 8 bit offset 0x00 Reading the register results in 0x1 if interrupts are enabled for the device 0x0 otherwise STATUS 32 bit offset 0x04 Writing the register with 0xABCD causes the device to update this register with the current device status Reading the register returns this status Suppose that reading a value of 0x0080 indicates a pending interrupt while 0x0000 means no interrupt is pending INTACK 16 bit offset 0x08 Writing the register with a non zero value acknowledges a pending interrupt condition To configure NI VISA to detect interrupts from the xyzScope you would enter information into the PXI Setup Wizard as shown in Figures 3 and 4 Figure 3 Interrupt Detection Information for xyzScope National Instruments Corporation 11 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 Figure 4 Interrupt Removal Information for xyzScope In this example you would choose Next to continue when you finished entering the sequence of register operations Device Manager Settings The PXI Setup Wizard allows you to customize how your device should appear under Windows Device Manager on Windows 95 98 systems This information includes the following Model Name The name of the device Manufacturer Name The manufacturer of the device
8. _ATTR_PXI_FUNC_NUM Function number same as in viOpen VI_ATTR_PXI_SUB_MANF_ID Subsystem manufacturer ID VI_ATTR_PXI_SUB_MODEL_CODE Subsystem model code VI_ATTR_PXI_MEM_TYPE_BAR0 through VI_ATTR_PXI_MEM_TYPE_BAR5 Memory type used in the specified BAR Valid values include VI_PXI_ADDR_NONE VI_PXI_ADDR_MEM VI_PXI_ADDR_IO VI_ATTR_PXI_MEM_BASE_BAR0 through VI_ATTR_PXI_MEM_BASE_BAR5 Memory base address assigned to the specified BAR if applicable VI_ATTR_PXI_MEM_SIZE_BAR0 through VI_ATTR_PXI_MEM_SIZE_BAR5 Memory size used by the device in the specified BAR if applicable Attribute Description VI_ATTR_MANF_ID The PCI vendor ID for this device VI_ATTR_MODEL_CODE The PCI device ID for this device VI_ATTR_INTF_TYPE Always has a value of VI_INTF_PXI for PXI instruments VI_ATTR_INTF_NUM The bus number for the device as specified in viOpen National Instruments Corporation 15 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 The following attributes are common to all device classes Refer to the NI VISA Programmer Reference Manual for more information on these attributes VI_ATTR_TMO_VALUE VI_ATTR_RSRC_NAME VI_ATTR_RSRC_SPEC_VERSION VI_ATTR_RSRC_IMPL_VERSION VI_ATTR_RSRC_MANF_NAME VI_ATTR_INTF_INST_NAME VI_ATTR_INTF_NUM VI_ATTR_WIN_BASE_ADDR VI_ATTR_WIN_SIZE VI_ATTR_WIN_ACCESS Event Operations The standard VISA event operations support th
9. are operation has an associated return value of True or False dependent on the result of the compare NI VISA makes the assumption that the device is interrupting if and only if the result of all Compare operations is True Because NI VISA relies on the result of the Compare operation in making this assumption at least one Compare operation must be present in an interrupt detection sequence for the sequence to be valid Create Register Operations The Interrupt Detection Info dialog box prompts you to add edit or remove register operations When you click on the Add a step before Add a step after or Edit a step button the PXI VISA Interrupt Information Register Operation dialog box appears as shown in Figure 2 Use the dropdown menus to specify the type of operation its width and the address space the operation applies to Enter all other values directly into the text boxes The relevance of each value is dependent on the operation as described in the previous section Types of Register Accesses National Instruments Corporation 9 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 Figure 2 Register Operation Dialog Box Adding a Register Operation To add a register operation choose either Add a step before or Add a step after depending on where you want the new step to be placed relative to the currently selected step Editing a Register Operation To edit an existing register operation double click on the entry or highlight the entry a
10. describes how to use the Setup program to install your software Controller Installation NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 6 National Instruments Corporation After the installation completes successfully if any system file has been modified the following screen appears Figure 1 Setup Completion Dialog Box You can either reboot the computer now so that the changes take effect immediately or you can reboot the computer at a later time However do not use the NI VISA software until you reboot your computer Updating the NI VISA Setup You can run the Setup program again to make changes to your software The same screens and messages are displayed as when you installed the software Select the Custom option to configure any changes Step 4 Check the Read Me File Refer to the readme txt file included with your software for the most up to date information about this release of NI VISA National Instruments Corporation 7 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 Using NI VISA with PXI Note Read this section only if you intend to use NI VISA with PXI Skip this section if you are not running a PXI system This section explains how to begin developing PXI based applications with NI VISA Versions of NI VISA prior to NI VISA 2 0 detected PXI devices automatically and gave users access to all PCI based devices in the system This created a potential stability risk by exposing core system components to unintentional access With NI VISA
11. e following event types for PXI VI_EVENT_IO_COMPLETION for asynchronous block moves VI_EVENT_PXI_INTR for PXI hardware interrupt handling Low Level and High Level Register Operations The standard VISA register operations use the following address spaces for PXI VI_PXI_BAR0_SPACE through VI_PXI_BAR5_SPACE space parameter for memory or I O cycles VI_PXI_CFG_SPACE for configuration cycles
12. es instrument drivers and executable soft front panel software included with VXIplug amp play compatible instruments from a variety of vendors Acrobat Online Documentation Your kit includes online manuals in the form of Adobe Acrobat version 3 0 portable document format PDF files The Acrobat manuals and their installed locations are as follows The NI VISA User Manual describes how to program using NI VISA Start Programs VXIpnp NI VISA User Manual The NI VISA Programmer Reference Manual describes in detail the attributes events and operations you use in NI VISA Start Programs VXIpnp NI VISA Programmer Reference Manual If you do not have Adobe Acrobat Reader 3 0 you can download a copy from the Adobe Web site at http www adobe com Utilities This release of NI VISA for Windows NT 95 98 includes utilities to help you configure develop and debug your system quickly T amp M Explorer and NI Spy You can use T amp M Explorer to view your entire T amp M system and configure various components When you launch T amp M Explorer a list of your VXI PXI GPIB and Serial devices appears on your screen To view the properties of each device such as logical address address space used and primary address right click on the device in the list When you view the properties of a National Instruments device you can configure the hardware settings directly from the properties list T amp M Explorer replaces many
13. evice information choose Next to continue Note If you did not check the Generates interrupts box skip ahead to the Device Manager Settings section NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 8 National Instruments Corporation Configure NI VISA for PXI Interrupts Enabling PXI interrupt handling within NI VISA is a two step process First you must specify how your device detects a pending interrupt and second you must specify how to acknowledge an interrupt if one was found to be pending The PXI Setup Wizard guides you through each of these steps Step 1 Detecting an Interrupt Because PCI based devices share one of four physical interrupt lines VISA needs a way to query your device to find out if it requires service when the software detects a hardware interrupt The wizard prompts you for the sequence of register accesses with which VISA makes this determination Types of Register Accesses Register accesses assume the form of Reads Writes or Compares Read Performs a register read of specified width from a given offset relative to a given address space Write Performs a register write of a given value of specified width to a given offset relative to a given address space Compare Applies a user supplied mask to the result of a Read operation and compares the masked result with another user supplied value For the purposes of determining whether or not your device is generating an interrupt the Comp
14. here Do You Start Step 1 Install LabVIEW and or LabWindows CVI If you want to use LabVIEW and or LabWindows CVI as VISA application development environments install them first The NI VISA installer will detect them and install the appropriate support files automatically If you install LabVIEW and or LabWindows CVI after you install VISA rerun the NI VISA installer to get the latest VISA support files installed correctly Step 2 Install Your NI VXI NI 488 2 Driver Software The installation method varies depending on the type of controller you purchased as shown in the following table Refer to the documentation that came with your controller for detailed installation instructions Controller Installation VXI PCI8000 MXI Controller VXIpc 800 700 600 Series VXI 1394 Controller The NI VXI VISA kit installs both the NI VXI and NI VISA driver software You do not need to install this package separately unless this is an upgrade Refer to the NI VXI VISA Read Me First document for more information VXIpc 486 embedded controller NI VXI and NI 488 2 are already installed on your hard drive National Instruments Corporation 5 NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 You can also use a National Instruments serial board that works along with the serial ports on your computer If you are using only serial I O you do not need to install NI VXI or NI 488 2 Note Because this implementation of VISA is a 32 bit driver it looks for 32 bi
15. nd choose Edit a step Removing a Register Operation To remove a register operation highlight the entry and choose Remove a step When you finish entering the sequence of register operations choose Next to continue Step 2 Acknowledging an Interrupt from Your PXI Device In addition to the interrupt detection sequence NI VISA also needs the sequence of register operations required to acknowledge an interrupt condition for your device At interrupt time if NI VISA determines that your device is interrupting via the sequence of accesses specified in Step 1 this sequence should do whatever is necessary to quell the interrupt condition This sequence is constructed using the same Read Write and Compare operations discussed in Step 1 and individual operations are entered in an identical manner Because this sequence should consist of the minimum operations necessary to turn off an interrupt condition for your device the result of any Compare operations while still valid are irrelevant to interrupt acknowledgment NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 10 National Instruments Corporation Note If your device uses ROAK Release on Interrupt Acknowledge interrupts and the ROAK register was accessed in the sequence specified by Step 1 this sequence can be left blank Example The hypothetical xyzScope is programmed to generate an interrupt when it finishes acquiring a waveform The xyzScope defines an interrupt enable register
16. t versions of NI VXI and or NI 488 2 If you are installing NI VISA on Windows 95 and have only 16 bit drivers please contact National Instruments to request the NI VXI Upgrade for Windows 95 or the Compatibility Release for NI 488 2 Step 3 Install Your NI VISA Software Start the Setup Program Insert the NI VISA diskette into your disk drive You can run SETUP EXE either from a DOS prompt or from the Start Run menu The installer prompts you for the desired installation type If you choose an option other than Express the installer guides you with a series of prompts for additional information including the components you want to install and the target directory VXI AT2010 MXI Controller Install the NI VXI for Windows 3 x NT software See Note VXI AT4000 MXI Controller Install the NI VXI for Windows 3 x software See Note GPIB VXI C controller or any National Instruments GPIB board that has a Windows NT 95 98 driver Install the NI 488 2 for Windows NT 95 98 software Controller Installation VXIpc embedded controller New VXIpc controllers NI VISA is already installed on your hard drive The remainder of this document applies only if you want to use the Setup program to make changes to your software Upgrades If you received this kit to upgrade your VXIpc continue with the remainder of this document to install the NI VISA software All other cases Install the NI VISA software The remainder of this document
17. ystem registry using the inf file Using PXI Resources in your VISA Application When you finish configuring NI VISA for use with your PXI device you are ready to begin application development This section describes PXI specific additions to NI VISA Note To make use of PXI functionality in your application you must define the macro NIVISA_PXI before including the visa h header file Resource Manager Operations PXI supports a single resource type INSTR The following VISA operations apply when using PXI viFindRsrc Basic Operation Use either of the following strings to locate your PXI devices INSTR PXI INSTR Advanced Operation Beginning with VISA 2 0 you can use complex queries to find instruments matching a more precise specification For example you can use the following description string to find all National Instruments PXI devices PXI INSTR VI_ATTR_MANF_ID 0x1093 Refer to the viFindRsrc topic in the NI VISA help file for more information viOpen Resource strings assume the form PXI bus deviceNumber functionNumber INSTR viGetAttribute viSetAttribute NI VISA for WIndows NT 95 98 14 National Instruments Corporation The following attributes are specific to PXI The following attributes are common among all device classes but have special meaning in PXI Attribute Description VI_ATTR_PXI_DEV_NUM Device number same as in viOpen VI
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