Chemistry Lab Instrumentation and LabVIEW

[M. Breimer]

Has anybody here ever worked on integrating signals / control of chemical
analysis
systems like Gas Chromatography, HPLC, Quartz Crystal Microbalance,
spectrometers? I'm a chemist who has suddenly found himself tossed into
the
world of VI's and Instrument drivers and I am looking for some help.
My first big quewstion is...


.

[M. Breimer]

Here is the situation:
I am running an HP / Agilent 6890 Gas Chromatograph system which runs through
an HP-IB card. I also have a PCI-MIO-16XE-50 DAQ card. LabVIEW is installed
and runs well, the instrument (the Gas Chromatograph) also runs fine. BUT,
the HP- IB card shows up in the Measurement and Automation Browser as a GPIB
card and doesn't work properly. On startup, Windows NT reports a failed
service that disappears if I remove the HP-IB card.

So, my first question is, what is HP-IB and why is it different then GPIB?
I have read a lot of things saying that HP-IB is IEEE 488.2 compliant, but
if it is why does it use a different VISA? I read in a past thread that
installing Agilent/HP SICL and then NI-VISA 2.5 would allow communication
with the HP-IB card.
But would that interfere with the DAQ card in any way?
Also, where would I get a copy of SICL? The GP-IB card came with the system
and I know very little about it. HP/Agilent is not very cooperative with
assistance and don't seem to like the thought of chemists dabbling in VI
work.

Any info answering these questions or suggestion where I might go to learn
more would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Marc Breimer
Graduate Student

Chemistry Department
State University of New York at Binghamton
Box 6016
Binghamton, NY 13902

[Kevin_work]

"M. Breimer" wrote:

>
> So, my first question is, what is HP-IB and why is it different then GPIB?
> I have read a lot of things saying that HP-IB is IEEE 488.2 compliant, but
> if it is why does it use a different VISA? I read in a past thread that
> installing Agilent/HP SICL and then NI-VISA 2.5 would allow communication
> with the HP-IB card. But would that interfere with the DAQ card in any way?
> Also, where would I get a copy of SICL? The GP-IB card came with the system
> and I know very little about it. HP/Agilent is not very cooperative with
> assistance and don't seem to like the thought of chemists dabbling in VI
> work.
>

Marc,
Here is the short (and long) of this.
History:
HP-IP was invented (more or less) by HP. At some point it became
standardized
as IEEE 488 (and revised as 488.2). HP-IB is HP Interface Bus, and was made for
HP control thier test equipment.
After it became a standard then other companies began to make cards and the more

generic GPIB (General Purpose Interface Bus) became the name of the game.

So on to your problem. T&M is a NI product and expects to talk to their HW /SW.
Since you have NI VISA installed if fails since NI-VISA will not talk to an
HP-IB.

What you need to do is install or reinstall the VISA driver from HP and this
should
solve the problem. HP / Agilent will not be very helpful with your
LabVIEW VI problems
since they have a competing product called HP-VEE. Your best bet for help is to
contact
National Instruments. They may be a little reluctant but they certainly will not
blow
$2500 in software over a $400 GPIB card.
Kevin Kent