Instrument Control (GPIB, Serial, VISA, IVI)

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device template OSX

I recently upgraded to the new GPIB board for OSX and I cannot find my device (an Agilent Spect Anal. 4411B). The old board could identify it. I think it may be a simple problem. When I open 'Explore GPIB' application I am expecting to see a device template with the GPIB0 I am seeing. Should I be looking for this in a different place? I cannot tell from the online help where the 'Device name listview control' is in OSX. Am I crazy and this is right in front of my face or is there an actual problem. I have tried multiple times uninstalling the entire package shutting down both the machines and bring them back up and installing the software to no avail.
Thank you in advance for your help,
Josh
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Message 1 of 10
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Hi, are you trying to see your Agilent device in the the Explore GPIB application aka GPIB Explorer? It will only show the PCI-GPIB you have installed or allow you to configure a GPIB-ENET/100. It does not show the devices that are connected to the GPIB interface. Instead, to make sure you have a solid connection to the Agilent device, you have several options.

1) Use the Interactive Control utility to send commands to the Agilent device. In GPIB Explorer, launch the NI-488.2 Help, and it will give you more info about how to use it.
2) Use one of the examples to communicate with the Agilent device. The examples use "*IDN?", but you can change it if your device recognizes different commands. These get installed in the same directory where the utilities appear.
3) If you have NI-VISA installed or plan to install it, you can use the VISA Interactive Control (VISAIC) to search for all GPIB devices. It will show the VISA resource name for your device, and you can test sending commands to the Agilent device.

Let me know if I misunderstood what you were asking for.
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Thank you that answers one of my questions. I anticipated that it was connected. My question is still how do I find out what location the device is at on the board? I know that I can get my instrument to send the "*IDN?" string, but I do not think that solves my problem. I will try and be more clear. I am using Igor as my interface when I enter the command: NI4882 ibfind="GPIB0"the result is that Igor stores the board unit descriptor in a variable. That works. My problem is that I would like to find the equivalent unit descriptor for the device. In the previous incarnation of GPIB Explore - NI-488 Config it allowed one to not only configure the controller but it also let you set what device name (dev1, dev2,dev3, etc.) is connected to what controller interface. In this previous version if I entered the command NI4882 ibfind="dev18" I would get the device descriptor. Is "IDN?" really what I am looking for? Sorry if this is really obvious, but I found the command help very difficult to navigate.
Thank you again,
Josh
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I'm still not sure if I understand, but I'll give it a try.

It sounds like you may have an older application that has a specific device name requirement. You are looking for a way to change the device template, so you can associate that specific device name instead of the default "dev1" that the NI-488.2 driver assumes. If you have flexibility with the application, and all you want is the device descriptor stored in a variable, then I would recommend using ibdev instead of ibfind. This gives you more flexibility instead of having to always set up the device template.

If you look for ibdev in the NI-488.2 Help (from GPIB Explorer), it will describe the parameters needed. I hope this helps!
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Hi Josh,

The GPIB Explorer program will only show you the GPIB controllers installed on your computer. You can use the Interactive Control utility to find all listeners and their addresses on the GPIB bus. I found a KnowledgeBase entry that describes how to do this.

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/9C9DBA7A3A56B6B686256F4A006FC8DA?OpenDocument

Good luck,
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Thanks, you guys have been great, but I have a new problem. I just updated to the new Tiger operating system on my Mac and suddenly issuing the command NI4882 ibfind={"GPIB0"} in the newest version of Igor Pro causes Igor to crash instantly. This command worked before I updated and I could read the board descriptor. The Igor people tell me that I should install the newest NI driver, but I just got this board and the driver I installed was NI4882 2.3. Is there a newer version? Who has the problem here me, you or Igor?
Thanks for your help,
Josh
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We released the 2.3 driver before Apple released Tiger. Unfortunately, version 2.3 is not compatible with Tiger. We are currently working on resolving the issue, but I currently do not have a timeframe for a fix for this problem.

Thanks for your understanding.

Craig A.
National Instruments Engineer
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As Craig mentioned, it will take some time before we can release another version of NI-488.2 that will include the fix. However, in the meantime, you can do the following.

Install NI-VISA 3.3, this will update some core services on your system. Once the newer version of NI-VISA is installed you should be able to use NI-488.2 version 2.3 on Tiger.

Message Edited by Support on 06-03-2005 05:10 PM

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Just minutes ago my spectrum analyzer screen turned white and could not be turned off at the instrument interface. Even when I unplugged it and plugged it back in the first time the screen was still white. When I unplugged it waited a few minutes and plugged it back in it started up slowly but did not complete the self-alignment it usually does. What did appear on the screen was the command "System, Alignments, Align now, all required" except that when I followed those instructions it went through the motions of aligning itself, but the message did not go away and it was not responsive to remote commands. What is going on? No unusual commands were being sent at the time. Nothing it had not completed successfully hundreds of times before. This unit has only been operation a few months.
-Josh
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Hi Josh:

Unfortunately I don't have any information about this problem. Have you tried to contact Agilent's technical support? They may be able to help you more with this issue.

Regards,

Emilie S.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
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