Chapter 3
Software Installation and Configuration
© National Instruments Corp.
3-9
GPIB-PCIIB/MS-DOS
Step 6. Developing Your Application Program
The easiest way to learn how to communicate with your instrument is by
controlling it interactively. Located in your GPIB-PC directory is an
interactive control program entitled
IBIC.EXE
. This program allows you
to write to and read from your instrument while it updates the status of these
GPIB transfers and displays any errors that occur.
To use this program, connect your instrument to the bus and enter the
following commands:
cd \GPIB-PC
IBIC
Then begin entering NI-488 commands as described in Section Five of the
NI-488 MS-DOS Software Reference Manual.
More About IBCONF
You use
IBCONF
to edit the description in the handler file of characteristics
of the devices and boards in the system. Running
IBCONF
to place this
information directly in the handler file eliminates having to restate it inside
each application program.
IBCONF
passes two groups of features to the handler. The first group
consists of the characteristics of the instruments or devices attached to your
GPIB-PCIIB board. The second group consists of the characteristics of
each GPIB-PCIIB board installed in the computer.
Characteristics of the Instruments
Each instrument used with the GPIB-PCIIB board has the following
characteristics:
•
A symbolic name of each device on the GPIB (such as
DEV5
or
PS5010
).
•
A GPIB-PCIIB access board for each device (for example,
GPIB0
).
The access board is discussed in Characteristics of Each GPIB-PCIIB.
•
A primary and, if used, a secondary address for each device.