I get an error attempting to perform CalibrateESeries on a 6071E board

[Mark@IntentDriven]

I'm using VB6, Trditional NIDAQ 7.4, and Measurement Studio. This command produces an error - this is a recent development; it has worked for years.

CWDAQ.CalibrateESeries 1, cwCalESeriesOpSelfCalibrate, cwCalESeriesNIDAQSet, 1#

[Mark@IntentDriven]

New information - the CalibrateESeries will work on a freshly booted PC - maybe once otr twice. But then it begins to fail/

[Neal M]

Hello Mark,

The fact that your code worked for a long time previously and then stopped is puzzling.  In order to get to the root of what is happening, I have some questions for you:

What is the error (and error code, if possible) you are seeing?

Has anything changed with your test setup recently?  For example, adding additional hardware, installing new drivers (even unrelated ones), or upgrading can make changes which could cause an error.

What happens if you reset your driver in Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX)?  If you right click on Traditional NI-DAQ (Legacy) Devices under My System»Devices and Interfaces and select Reset Driver for Traditional NI-DAQ, do you see any error?

Can you open a test panel in MAX? You can try this by right clicking your device under Traditional NI-DAQ (Legacy) Devices and selecting Test Panel.

Do you try call any calibrate functions prior to the one that causes the error?

I am unsure as to why the program runs correctly on a "freshly booted PC" but then stops working.  That behavior tells me that there may be an issue with clearing the resources after you are done with the program.  Does the program run the first time always? Or does it only run on a PC that was very recently restarted?

Please post back with as much information as you can, the more the merrier.

[Mark@IntentDriven]

When the application starts, we use two commands to verify that the board is resent and functioning. These always work.

CWDAQ1.GetDAQDeviceInfo(1, cwGetDeviceTypeCode, Info)
CWDAQ1.ResetDAQDevice(1)

Within the program, we occassionally "kick" the board. This is a rare act of desperation that occasionally works:

CWDAQ1.ResetDAQDevice(1)
CWDAQ1.CalibrateESeries(1, cwCalESeriesOpSelfCalibrate, cwCalESeriesNIDAQSet, 1#)
CWDAQ1.ResetDAQDevice(1)

The CalibrateESeries is the step that fails. And the reset function via the MAX did not fix it. (presumably, it was just doing a ResetDAQDevice anyway).

This problem never happened over the last 10+ years of using E-series boards (16 and 64 channel 12 bit ISA and PCI boards). But recently I discovered it on one machine and then on another machine.

As an aside, we used NI-DAQ 6.9.x up un til this year. We are now using 7.x traditional drivers. It is possible that the problem occured with the new drivers.

Finally, we are using Windows XP-Pro with updates.

[Neal M]

Hello again Mark,

Since you are running Traditional DAQ code before the error occurs, this tells me that this issue isn't with the driver as a whole.  If the issue was an upgrade problem, I would expect none of the Traditional DAQ functions to work.  In order to determine what is going on, I need to know what error you are seeing.  Both the error code and the error text would help significantly.

Also, have you tried to run this program with different cards?  You say that you have been using this code on many cards successfully, which tells me that the issue may lie with the hardware.

You also mention that you found this behavior on more than one computer.  Is the code running correctly on a third computer? This would also help me figure out if it is a code issue, a driver issue, or a hardware issue.

This information should allow me to suggest some possibilites for the cause of the error.

Merry Christmas,

[Mark@IntentDriven]

I believe that I understand the problem. Thanks for your ideas.

The error is 10842 - The hardware is not responding to the specified operation...

The scenario that will duplicate the problem (and is consistant with the symptoms) is this - run the application and Alt-F4 the application during data acquisition. This mathces with some application crashes that we have experienced.

Thanks for your help.