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National Instruments Corporation
4-1
4
Developing Your Application
This chapter discusses the software utilities you can use to start developing
applications that use the NI-VXI/VISA driver.
After verifying your system configuration, you can begin to develop your
VXI/VME or VISA application software. Be sure to check the
README.txt
file for the latest application development notes and changes.
Your software includes several utilities to assist you in your system
development. These include T&M Explorer, Resman, NI Spy, VISAIC, and
VIC. You can also access several examples to learn how to use NI-VISA or
NI-VXI for certain tasks. Each of these components assists you with one of
four steps of development: configuration, device interaction, programming,
and debugging.
You can access these utilities through the Windows
Start
menu. Open
either the National Instruments VXI or VXIpnp program group and select
the utility you want to use.
Configuration
The configuration utilities in your kit are T&M Explorer and Resman.
Resman is the application that performs VXI Resource Manager functions
as described in the VXIbus specification. Its most important functions
include configuring all VXI devices on the VXI backplane for operation
and allocating memory for devices that request it.
Note
Because power cycling resets all devices, run Resman to reconfigure them every
time chassis power is cycled.
Resman must be run on any system that contains VXI devices
(including systems containing VXI-MXI-2 or VME-MXI-2 mainframe
extender devices). Because VME devices normally do not have
configuration registers as defined in the VXIbus specification, the
Resource Manager is unable to detect VME devices. Because of this,
when using systems containing a mixture of VME devices and VXI
devices, you need to manually add your VME devices in T&M Explorer
