what's the difference between I/O and line?

[dragondriver]

Hi all,

  I am using Labview 7 and in my mahcine, I have a 6013 card installed. However, there was a interface card designed by someone else long time ago, on the board, only the AO0, AO1, ..., A07, DIO0, DIO1, ..., DIO7 were printed. In the program, I saw some code to use Write to Digital Line.vi to send data to the digial io. Let say I write to DIO 3, so my understanding here DIO 3 denotes the I/O channel 3, but what about line? What's the difference between channel and line? When I write data to one I/O channel, are we wriitng a byte or a bit to it? Thanks.

[crossrulz]

A line is a single DIO input/output (ex: P1.0).  A port is multiple DIO lines.  A port is typically 8, 16, or 32 lines.  If writing to a port, you will use a U8, U16, or U32 respectively.  If writing to a line, you use a boolean.  It sounds like you just need to use a line.

[dragondriver]

May I further ask what is channel? Is it the same as port?

[crossrulz · Accepted solution]

A channel is usually used with the analog I/O.  Each AI or AO is a channel.