agilent mxg N5183 gives -113,"Undefined header" when I try to enable the RF output, using

[john55]

I am connecting to a MXG RF signal generator (N5183) via lan, Labview 2009 using the labview driver. I get the above error when trying to enable the output. Is this a bug in the driver? Everything else works fine.

[Dennis_Knutson · Accepted solution]

duplicate post

[john55]

Found the problem.

When a MXG series Sig Gen does not have the modulate output option installed in the instrument and the labview pnp driver trys to set its state with  OUTP:MOD OFF, an error is returned.

The driver needs to check if it the option is fitted before sending the command.

[PDolan]

How did you get the labview VI to check for the presence of the modulator?

[GoTest]

I had a similar problem with the "PSG MXG series" signal generators. The driver worked fine for the PSG series (E8267D) but would not work for the MXG series (N5183B). The failure would occur when attampting to enable the RF Output via the "Configure RF Output" vi. It took a little digging. The primary fault was that the N5183B does not support modulation and the configure VI was attempting to send a modulation related command. The ultimate fix was that the "Configure RF Output" VI runs a series of checks up front to determine the type of instrument that is connected. The VI has a ring constant that allows you to change what the first check is looking for. For some reason the first check was set to determine if the instrument is from the PSG-A series. The control name suggests that the default value should be MXG-B but it was not set to that. I switched it to the MXG-B series and that fixed the problem. If the first check returns a true, then the modulation command is not added to the string. See the screen captures.