Help with driver and Labview

[backup]

I need some serious help, I'm a student at SIAST Kelsey campus, which is a tech school, I'm currently enrolled in the chemical technology program. We have a computer class in which we have a project to hook up an old Varian DMS-100 UV-Visible Spectrophotometer to a computer with Lab-view and create and run a small program. The program can be anything it doesn't matter, I have some computer knowledge, but this is a little out of my league.
I know the it's a IEEE-488 set-up and I get find and drivers which support the dms-100. Please can anyone help out, is there a generic driver that might work? If you need to know anything else let me know and I'll try and give you the answer.

Thanks

[Dennis_Knutson]

Since NI doesn't have this instrument driver, the next step is to check with Varian to see if they have anything. If they don't, you can do a couple of things. First, open up MAX (Measurement and Automation Explorer), connect the instrument to the GPIB card and see if it's detected. You right click on the GPIB board listed in MAX and select Scan for Instruments. If it's not found, then that problem has to be solved before doing any programming. Second, you have to have the programming manual for the instrument. Every manufacturer will implement commands differently. Sometimes even, the same manufacturer will have different command sets for similar instruments (i.e. two different models of a DMM). Once you have the manual, you should first try things out in MAX VISA interactive control. Try out a few commands and see if you can get the instrument to respond to what you type. If you have LabVIEW 7.0 or higher, try using the Instrument I/O Assistant. It's good for doing basic stuff where you are always sending the same commands with no variables. A bit more complex but more flexible is to use either GPIB Read/Write functions or VISA Read/Write. I generally use VISA for everything (GPIB, Serial, USB, etc.) but that's up to you. There's a shipping example called LabVIEW<->GPIB that you should try. Using VISA is similar except the GPIB Address string would get replaced with a VISA Resource Name Control.

Reply back here if you get get stuck with any of these steps or have any other questions.

[backup]

Thanks, I'll test this out tomorrow in my computer lab and let you know how it went.

[backup]

Labview does not detect the instrument. Varian doesn't have a driver available. Looks like I might have to try something else.

[Dennis_Knutson]

LabVIEW or MAX doesn't detect the instrument? MAX has to detect it first. Is there a GPIB board listed in MAX? What type? You have a cable connected from the pc to the instrument? For some instruments, you have to enable remote control from it's control panel. Check the user manual.

[backup]

MAX did not detect the instrument, MAX detected a GPIB0 (PCI-GPIB). The instrument is hooked up to the computer and there doesn't appear to be a remote switch. We are working with the MAX VISA right now and are entering code from the DMS-100 manual and we're receiving a time-out error.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Well, if you right clicked on the PCI-GPIB and selected "scan for instruments" and MAX reported no instruments found, you won't be able to use VISA Interactive Control because there's nothing to communicate with. Do you have another GPIB instrument that you can connect or a different computer with another GPIB board? It would seem that either the board, instrument, or cable is bad. You need to isolate the problem. How is the instrument's GPIB address set? Some have dip switches and some are set from the front panel. Make sure it's set to something other than 0.