Appendix B
Common Questions
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National Instruments Corporation
B-3
PCI-Based MXI-2 Interface for Windows
What about running Resman?
Resman is the name of the utility that performs the duties of a VXI
Resource Manager as discussed in the VXIbus specification. When you
set a National Instruments controller to Logical Address 0, at some point
you will need to run Resman to configure the VXI instruments. If
your controller uses a different (non-zero) logical address and is a
message-based device, you need to start Resman before running it on
the Logical Address 0 computer.
When do you need to run Resman?
Run Resman whenever you need to configure your VXI instruments.
For example, if you power-cycle your VXI chassis, your instruments will
be reset, and you will need to run Resman to configure them. You can get
into trouble if you run Resman when your devices are not in a reset state.
Therefore, if you need to run Resman after running it once, you should reset
all of your VXI instruments.
In the new architecture, you can perform resource manager operations from
within MAX. Additionally, you can tell MAX to run Resman when the
computer first boots. In this case, you may never need to run Resman
explicitly again. This is common when you use an embedded PC such as
the VXIpc-860. You can configure the computer to run Resman at startup,
so when you power on the chassis, Resman runs. If you power-cycle the
chassis, the PC reboots, forcing Resman to run again.
With the PCI-MXI-2, PCI-MXI-2 Universal, or PXI-8320, you may need
to run the Resman utility if you boot your computer before powering on
your VXI chassis or if you power-cycle your VXI chassis while the external
PC remains on. In these cases, the instruments would have been reset
without the computer rebooting. You will need to run the Resman utility or
configure your system in MAX to initialize your VXI system.
What if I have a system that requires the old utilities?
The new installer for NI-VXI/NI-VISA gives you the option of installing
some of the old NI-VXI API utilities and documents. Thus, if you have a
documented procedure for configuring your system that relies on the old
configuration utilities, you may be able to install them on your system. Use
the
Custom
installer option to explicitly add the old utilities. If the custom
installation does not install the utility you need, contact NI technical
support for a solution.
