Agilent Technologies USB/GPIB Interface Converter 82357A, User Manual

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Chapter 1 31
Installing the 82357A
Step 6: Programming via the 82357A
Accessing VISA and
SICL Manuals
You can access .pdf copies of the Agilent VISA User’s Guide and the
Agilent SICL User’s Guide for Windows from the blue IO icon on the
Windows taskbar. Adobe Reader is required to view these manuals.
To access the Agilent VISA User’s Guide , click the IO icon and then click
Documentation | VISA Users Guide
. To access the Agilent SICL User’s Guide
for Windows , click the IO icon and then click
Documentation | SICL Users
Guide
. To access VISA COM information, and function references for VISA,
VISA COM, and SICL, click the IO icon and then click
Documentation | IO
Libraries Suite Help.
Introduction to IO
Interface
Configuration
An
IO interface
consists of a hardware interface and a software interface.
One purpose of the Connection Expert utility is to associate a unique
software interface ID with a hardware interface.
The Agilent IO Libraries Suite uses an
Interface ID
or
Logical Unit Number
to
identify an interface. This information is passed in the parameter string of
the
viOpen
function call in a VISA program or in the
iopen
function call in
a SICL program.
Connection Expert assigns an Interface ID and Logical Unit (LU) Number to
the interface hardware, as well as other necessary configuration values for
an interface when the interface is configured. Typically, the LU Number is
automatically assigned and you can ignore its setting. The LU Number is
used internally as a unique identifier. When the IO interface is configured,
you can use Agilent VISA, VISA COM, or SICL to program assigned
instruments.
Example: IO
Interface
Configuration
For example, the GPIB interface system in the following figure consists of
a Windows PC with an 82357A USB/GPIB Interface Converter connected
between a USB port and three GPIB instruments with GPIB primary
addresses of 3, 4, and 5, respectively. The instruments are connected via
GPIB cables.
For this system, the Connection Expert utility has been used to assign a
VISA name of “GPIB1” and a SICL name of “hpib7”. With these names
assigned to the interfaces, the VISA/SICL addressing is as shown in the
figure.
Since unique names have been assigned by Connection Expert, you can
use the VISA
viOpen
command to open the IO paths to the GPIB
instruments as shown in the figure. Or, you can use the SICL
iopen
command to open the IO paths.