NI GPIB-Enet/100 to Agilent VXI mainframe

[Vishi Anand]

I am using VXI main frame for first time. It is agilent E8404A. Now to
talk to the boards inside the main frame, I am using GPIB Enet/100. I
downloaded 2 files (_gpibvxi.ini & hpgvpx32.dll) which both Agilent & NI
recommended.

After hooking up everything and resetting the main-frame, I could not
see the devives using MAX (ver. 3.0). I did see the command module
(agilent E1406) connected to the GPIB-Enet/100 that I was using but not
the actual modules connected to the command module inside the VXI
main-frame.

Now after sometime, I am seeing an entry "GPIB-VXI" under "Devices and
Interfaces" which is listing the various modules that I have in my VXI
chassis. Don't know how I get to show this info. I did re-boot my machine.


The supplied agilent example program still doesn't work. It can not
detect any devices. But if I run same program on another PC (which has
no NI VISA only agilent stuff), it works fine.

I am looking for information about connecting NI GPIB to non NI VXI
mainframes. Do I have to use agilent VISA/VXI or NI VISA/VXI would do.
Any help is much appreciated. I have looked at the agilent site and not
much help there. I couldn't even get the drivers for my instruments from
their web site (agilent deleveloper network).


vishi

[Vishi Anand]

I am seeing on NI web site "Can I Use VISA to Communicate with My VXI
Instruments If I Am Using an HP 1406 GPIB-VXI Command Module?"

In this doc it says "NOTE: Only the Windows 98/95/NT platforms are
supported. Windows 2000 has not yet been tested."

Could my problems be coz of win2000? Any help is appreciated.

vishi

Vishi Anand wrote:
> I am using VXI main frame for first time. It is agilent E8404A. Now to
> talk to the boards inside the main frame, I am using GPIB Enet/100. I
> downloaded 2 files (_gpibvxi.ini & hpgvpx32.dll) which both Agilent & NI
> recommended.
>
> After hooking up everything and resetting the main-frame, I could not
> see the devives using MAX (ver. 3.0). I did see the command module
> (agilent E1406) connected to the GPIB-Enet/100
that I was using but not
> the actual modules connected to the command module inside the VXI
> main-frame.
>
> Now after sometime, I am seeing an entry "GPIB-VXI" under "Devices and
> Interfaces" which is listing the various modules that I have in my VXI
> chassis. Don't know how I get to show this info. I did re-boot my machine.
>
> The supplied agilent example program still doesn't work. It can not
> detect any devices. But if I run same program on another PC (which has
> no NI VISA only agilent stuff), it works fine.
>
> I am looking for information about connecting NI GPIB to non NI VXI
> mainframes. Do I have to use agilent VISA/VXI or NI VISA/VXI would do.
> Any help is much appreciated. I have looked at the agilent site and not
> much help there. I couldn't even get the drivers for my instruments from
> their web site (agilent deleveloper network).
>
>
> vishi
>

[JoshuaP]

Hey Vishi,

The first thing you need to do is make sure that the GPIB Enet/100 gets setup correctly. You should see the GPIB ENET in your device manager. If not I suggest you run through the user manual to reinstall the device. I am assuming the VXI should act like any other computer similar to our PXI controllers. In those cases you just follow the instructions in the user manual.

http://www.ni.com/pdf/manuals/322752a.pdf

Make sure you follow the instructions very closely, because these devices can be difficult to setup other wise. The version of VISA should not matter for the GPIB-ENET, but if your vendors VXI doesn't care; I would suggest using the latest version of NI-VISA.

When you get everything set up correctly, you should see the ENET in MAX and
under the device manager. The run the NI-488.2 Troubleshooting Wizard. This will test that the ENET is connected and working correctly. Finally, if you have all of your properties setup correctly, you should be able to scan for instruments.

I hope this helps out.

-Josh

[Dan_Mondrik]

Other comments here have shown how to set up and test the ENET-GPIB itself. Once you have that, you should go into MAX, right-click on Devices&Interfaces, and create a new GPIB-VXI interface. The Agilent GPIB-VXI controller address is usually primary 9, secondary 0 (that is different from None). You may have to exit MAX and restart it, just to be sure it got saved properly. Some older versions of NI-VISA don't rescan for GPIB-VXI controllers properly when you create a new one.

Also make sure your VXI logical addresses are multiples of 8. Sometimes the Agilent GPIB-VXI controllers have problems with register-based VXI instruments that are at other addresses.

Once you have all that set up, you should see the VXI devices under the GPIB-VXI controller. I a
m not sure, but your comments sound like you may have already gotten to this point and aren't sure how you did it.

The resource strings for these devices look like this: "GPIB-VXI::::INSTR". Run the NI-VISA Interactive Control utility and it should auto-detect the instruments. If MAX found the instruments, so should this program. You can use this to try accessing your instruments.

As to your final question, yes, NI-VISA should work just fine for you.

Dan Mondrik
National Instruments