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NI MXI2/VXI compaitibility with HPE1411B

I have been using an NI MXI 2 card to control a VXI shelf containing an HPE1411B volt meter among other cards. Until now all the PC's have been 350MHZ or slower. I am trying to do this same thing with a 700MHZ Compaq. I have reduced the shelf to only the controller and the 1411 and have tried 3 different VXI shelves. All 3 are fine on the slower pc, but the faster pc's are able to get a voltage reading only intermittently. If they work once the continue to work until I exit my application OR the soft front panel. It they do not work the first time they do not work. They generally fail self test in the soft front panel. I have tried many different versions of the NI VISA and the HP driver with no success.
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There shouldn't be any problem with the MXI-2 and a 700 MHz processor. You may want to load our latest driver, NI-VXI 3.0, as it was tested with faster processors. It can be downloaded from our ftp site at ftp.ni.com/support/vxi/drivers/

It may just be that the 1411 cannot handle the increased speed with which the transfers are handled by the faster processors. That would be my best guess as to why you are seeing what you are seeing.
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A question about NI-VXI 3. Looking at the link this would appear a release
version is this the case? If so you may want to update the link to the
Downloads website as this is still showing v2.1.1 as the current version of
NI-VXI.

Thanks,
Greg
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Yes, NI-VXI 3.0 is officially released. We are working to get all of our links updated. Thanks for pointing that out.

Trey Hamilton
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
http://www.ni.com/support
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I loaded 3.0. I can now take measurements with no problems. If I run self test, the soft front panel will eventually lock after a few tries. It is not perfect, but got me to the point where I can make it function. Thank you.

On 2.1.1, I could set up hardware on the MXI-2 card. One of the settings was the IRQ which I could set for IRQ1. I could not find the way to do this and the help indictated that I should go to a menu that does not exist. HOW DO I SET IRQ using 3.0?????
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Configuration under NI-VXI 3 is all done through the Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX). You can configure the IRQ lines by right clicking on the "MXI-2 Bus" entry, selecting "Properties", and then choosing the "Interrupt Handler" tab. There you can choose each of the lines and edit the settings for them.

Trey Hamilton
National Instruments
Applications Engineer
http://www.ni.com/support
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We have had similar experiences when moving up the processor chain. First
from Pentium to Pentium Pro, then to Pentium 2 and lately to Pentium 3. Our
workaround was to plaster delays between commands going to the bus. Not a
good solution but it seemed to work. The card that seemed to be most
affected by processor speed in our system was the HP E1437A digitizer. We
never had a problem with the soft panel though just the application.

Greg


"mtwaddle" wrote in message
news:50650000000800000094190000-986092468000@quiq.com...
> I have been using an NI MXI 2 card to control a VXI shelf containing
> an HPE1411B volt meter among other cards. Until now all the PC's have
> been 350MHZ or slower. I am trying to do this same thing with a
> 700MHZ Compaq. I have reduced
the shelf to only the controller and
> the 1411 and have tried 3 different VXI shelves. All 3 are fine on
> the slower pc, but the faster pc's are able to get a voltage reading
> only intermittently. If they work once the continue to work until I
> exit my application OR the soft front panel. It they do not work the
> first time they do not work. They generally fail self test in the
> soft front panel. I have tried many different versions of the NI VISA
> and the HP driver with no success.
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Message 3 of 7
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