Problems with GPIB control through CE card

[Will3001]

Hello All,

   I seems to be having some problems which are not unique. I had a CE PCI card installed in my maching running a keithley 2400 current source. Recently I had a problem with the PC and it was upgraded to XP and Labview 8.0. I installed both the CE PCI driver and albview support from files I downloaded from this forum and have attached them to this message.

Unfortunately I cannot seems to get my programs to work. I am not getting a "cannot add resource" message from my programs with a NI 488 bus error.

I've tested a basic read/write and its still the same. The card is recognised properly in device manager. I installed the drives as follows

Installed the CE support and rebooted

Installed Labview support and rebooted.

I've read that maybe the version of the CE driver I'm using might be a problem but I cant work out whether I have 7 or 8, perhaps this is something someone could clear up from the attached file.

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks

Will.

[Kurt_NISalesEngineer]

Hi,

I'm assuming you have obtained the files from this discussion forum: http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=170&message.id=49024&requireLogin=False

Discussion board was started in 2003. I understand that you are working with LV 8 and XP and I imagine you are running into difficulties because the LabVIEW instrument driver may have been developed for a much earlier edition of LabVIEW and on a different operating system  to the one you are now trying to get the application working on. Also I imagine the NI GPIB driver would have been a much earlier kind. The latest driver for GPIB instrument that NI provide is NI 488.2 version 2.4 for win32. you can download this driver from www.ni.com/downloads > drivers and updates link.

If you are new to LabVIEW I would recomend looking at using the instrument IO assistant / express VI (like a wizard) on the block diagram to help you communicate with your instrument. If you are an experienced user you will find that the Instrument IO assistant uses lower level VISA vi's. If you have installed VISA drivers then you will find a VISA palette in LV from which you will find the VISA vi's. You can also obtain the NI VISA drivers from the same link. To check what drivers and versions you have got installed in LabVIEW goto > tools > measurment and automation explorer and expand the software directory in the configuration tree.

You wrote: "I am not getting a "cannot add resource" message from my programs with a NI 488 bus error" 

From which i assume you are looking at communicating with the instrument via GPIB interface. Ideally to have LabVIEW communicate with GPIB instruments one would have the NI 488.2 driver installed.

can you tell me more about CE PCI? How long / when was the card purchased?

i hope this helps!

Kind Regards,

Kirtesh Mistry

Applications Engineer

National Instruements UK & Ireland