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PCMCIA-GPIB and Win2K resource conflicts ?

Hi all,

I am using a PCMCIA-GPIB with driver version 2.1.0.3500 on a Win2K machine with a PCI-to-PCMCIA Adapter from Ricoh (device manager says: Ricoh R/RL/RB/5C478II,R5C522 or compatible cardbus controller).
The Win2k detect the card without problems and there are no resource conflicts.
However, I cannot communicate with GPIB devices and the NI-488.2 Troubleshooting Wizard says:
1. NI-488.2 Software Presence = verified
2. GPIB Hardware Presence = verified
3. GPIB Interface Sequentially = failed

A double click on the PCMCIA-GPIB device opens the Wizard with: "Interrupt Resource Conflict in Windows 2000/XP".

Can someone help me? There are no resource conflicts and I also removed all unnessesary cards from my
system that disabled all other devices which eat interrupts. I also tried other PCI and other cardbus slots but no success!!!

Regards,

Heiko
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The following is an educated guess, but still a guess.

The definition of PCI and Windows 2000's PCI bus driver allow devices to share interrupts. But if an actual device or the lowest-level driver for the actual device do not fully conform to the PCI standard then they will still make problems for themselves and/or for other devices that share the same interrupt.

Try using Device Manager (in Computer Manager or whatever it's called in English, in Administrative Tools), go to the device's resources and try to change the IRQ setting to an IRQ which other devices are not using.

In my experience, even though it "should" not be necessary to reboot or power down after such a change, I sometimes had to power down the machine and reboot. Let's hope that Windows
2000 doesn't change the IRQ back to a shared one when rebooting.

If an unshared IRQ setting will be remembered by Windows 2000, and if the device starts working, then it will look like an NI bug and let's hope it can be fixed. But if this doesn't work then the cause could still be anything.
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Heiko,

Thanks for contacting National Instruments.

In his post, ndiamond gave some some excellent ideas for troubleshooting IRQs. I welcome you to try the suggestions he gave.

Also, I am curious if your PCMCIA-GPIB shows up under Devices and Interfaces in MAX? If so, if you right-click on the GPIB entry and select Scan for Instruments, does it detect the instrument(s) you currently have attached to the bus? If the instrument(s) are detected, if you right click on an instrument and select Communicate with Instrument, can you query the instrument? If you are able to do these things, I would ignore the failure of the diagnostic. If this process fails, post here and note where it failed and what the error code/description was if applicable.

Have a good da
y!

Sincerely,

Ross C
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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Hi Ross,

thanks for the help and answer.
Yes, I can see the Device and Interfaces in MAX.
No, scanning does not work because it never completes. I have to kill the task after couple of hours manually.

I am also sure that at least one of the used interrupts (3, 5, 7, 10, 11) is not further used by any other device. I also switched off all devices in the PC bios (serial line, parallel port, audio, usb etc.) and also removed all unneccessary cards from the computer.

I have no other idea ...

Ross, do you have some more low-level debugging tools or a debug driver (which reports to Dbgview.exe) to figure out the reason for that??? Is it possible that your driver has problems with the Ricoh PCI2PCMCIA bridge chipset?? Is it essentially that t
he GPIB driver needs an interrupt? ... I guess, polling would also work??

Best Regards,

Heiko
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Heiko,

I found the following document for you on our website which describes the steps to correct the error you described (failing sequential verfication):
PCI or PCMCIA GPIB Device Fails the GPIB Interfaces Sequentially Verified Test

This should help you correct the problem. If it does not, please reply and we can discuss it further. To the best of my knowledge, there is not a problem with using our PCMCIA-GPIB card with a PCMCIA-to-PCI converter.

Sincerely,

Ross C
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
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