Chapter 1
Introduction
©
National Instruments Corporation
1-3
Getting Started with Your PXI-8150 Series
If you ordered LabVIEW or LabWindows/CVI, you received a
configuration disk to access either or both of these application
programming environments. Refer to Chapter 2, Setup, for more
information. You also received all the necessary libraries to support
your PXI-8150 and hundreds of complete instrument drivers, which
are modular, source-code programs that handle the communication
with your instrument to speed your application development.
Files and Directories Installed on Your Hard Drive
Your hard drive includes a directory called
images
in its root that
contains software and soft copies of manuals for the operating system
and peripherals. The directory structure under the
images
directory is
logically organized into several levels.
In the
images
directory itself, you will find a
manuals
directory,
an
os
directory, and directories for each of the peripherals of your
computer.
The
manuals
directory contains quick reference guides, technical
reference manuals, and National Instruments software manuals, all in
Adobe Acrobat format. To access any of these manuals, change your
directory to
c:\images\pxi815x\manuals
and list the contents of
that directory. You will see several files, one corresponding to each
peripheral.
The
os
directory contains a subdirectory corresponding to the operating
system installed on your computer. That subdirectory contains an image
of the CD from which your operating system was installed, so you do
not need to insert the CD when you install a new peripheral. When the
software prompts you to insert the CD, simply direct the system to look
in the
images\os
directory instead.
For example, if your system has Windows 95 installed, you should find
an image of the Windows 95 CD in
c:\images\os\win95
.
The rest of the directories correspond to each of the peripherals in
your system. Within each of these directories are the drivers for the
peripherals. These files and directories are copied exactly from the
distribution disks of the manufacturers, so the naming conventions vary
from peripheral to peripheral.
