Appendix B
Common Errors and Their Solutions
©National Instruments Corp.
B-7
GPIB-PC User Manual
Other Error Conditions
Listed below are general errors which may occur when using the GPIB-
PC hardware and software.
Error Condition: Attempts to run the GPIB utility programs,
IBDIAG
,
IBTEST
, or
IBIC
and returns
Bad command or File Name
error
from DOS. Also, the distribution files do not appear to be on the boot
disk after running
IBSTART
.
Solution:
•
IBSTART
copies the files to the subdirectory
\GPIB-PC
on the
boot disk. Only
GPIB.COM
and
IBCONF.EXE
are copied to
the root directory. Change to the
\GPIB-PC
directory with the
DOS command
cd \GPIB-PC
to run other programs.
Error Condition: Function call does not return and the program seems
to hang forever.
Solutions:
•
Run
IBCONF
and confirm that the board's DMA channel and
interrupt line match the hardware settings. Then run
IBTEST
after rebooting. Also check that the DMA channel and interrupt
line do not conflict with other devices in the computer.
•
Check that the time limit is not set to zero, which results in
infinite time limits. To do this, run
IBCONF
and look at the
time limit value both for your device and your board. Or, from
IBIC
, call
IBTMO
and pass to it the timeout argument value
you believe is correct (the default is 13, which represents 10
seconds). Assuming that the
IBTMO
call does not result in an
error, the previous value returned by the call will equal the
value passed to it if the time limit was what you expected.
•
Check that you do not call
IBWAIT
for an event that may not
happen without also waiting for TIMO as well. For example, if
you fail to set the TIMO bit while waiting for RQS from a
device, and for some reason the device will not assert SRQ, the
IBWAIT
call will not return.