LCR meter

[kmo]

Dear Sir/madam,

I have to write a program in labview to measure the impeadance of transistor for different frequencies and different voltages using LCR which is connected using the GPIB IEEE-488 cable. The program should takes voltage range or frequency range as input and then output is shown using graph of impeadace against voltage or impedance against frequency depending on what range was given.

To start with I have downloaded the drivers for LCR precision meter 428XA.
Now the questions are:

Website says that this drivers are for Labview 7.0 but we have Labview 7.1. Is this still ok??
If this is ok, how do i know if the labview is recognizing the instrument or not??
When i run the getting started visa, it gives me initialization error with some code -1073807346. what does this mean??
Do i have to install some visa before i start??

I am absolute beginner in labview and i have to finish this project in this month. Please do lend me hand in this matters.

thanks in advance

[Dennis_Knutson]

You should have installed VISA when you installed the software for the GPIB board. You can verify this in MAX (Measurement and Automation Explorer). You can also go to MAX, select the GPIB board, right click and select Scan for Instruments. Your LCR meter should be found. Assuming that's it's found, with the Getting Started VI, click the little down arrow on the VISA resource name control. Along with things like Com1, LPT1, you should find your LCR meter listed as GPIB0::? where ? is the address of the meter. Make sure this is selected before trying to run the VI. If you want, you can just open the VI called HP428XA Initialize.vi and run that first. Once you get that to work, everything else should be OK.

The VI will run whether you have LabVIEW 7 or 7.1.