Chapter 4 Using the GPIB Hardware and Software
© National Instruments Corporation
4-3
CPCI-GPIB/PMC-GPIB for Windows NT
For information about choosing a programming method, developing your
application, or compiling and linking, refer to the NI-488.2M User
Manual for Windows 95 and Windows NT. For detailed information about
each NI-488 function and NI-488.2 routine, refer to the NI-488.2M
Function Reference Manual for Win32.
Running Existing DOS and Windows GPIB Applications
You can run existing DOS and Windows GPIB applications under
Windows NT by using the GPIB Virtual Device Driver,
gpib-vdd.dll
,
which is included with your NI-488.2M software.
To run DOS GPIB applications, load the special GPIB device driver
gpib-nt.com
instead of
gpib.com
, which you normally use with DOS.
When you install the NI-488.2M software, the installation program
copies
gpib-nt.com
into a new subdirectory called
doswin16
. To
use
gpib-nt.com
, you must modify your
config.nt
file to
load
gpib-nt.com
whenever a DOS application runs. The
config.nt
file is located in your
winnt\system32
directory, where
winnt
is your
Windows NT directory, for example,
c:\windows
. To load
gpib-nt.com
, add the following line to your
config.nt
file:
device=
path\doswin16\gpib-nt.com
where
path
is the directory where you installed the GPIB software (the
default installation directory is
c:\gpib-nt
).
To run 16-bit Windows GPIB applications, the system uses the special
GPIB dynamic link library,
gpib.dll
. When you install the NI-488.2M
software, the installation program copies
gpib.dll
into the
winnt\system32
directory, where
winnt
is your Windows NT
directory, for example
c:\windows
. As long as
gpib.dll
is in your
Windows NT directory, your system automatically accesses
gpib.dll
whenever you launch a 16-bit Windows GPIB application.
