Appendix B
Common Questions
©
National Instruments Corporation
B-3
PCI-Based MXI-2 Interfaces for Windows 2000/NT/Me/98
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, you will
at some point need to run Resman to configure your VXI instruments.
If your controller uses a different (non-zero) logical address and is a
message-based device, you need to start Resman on your non-Logical
Address 0 controller before running it on the Logical Address 0 computer.
So 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.
You can perform resource manager operations from within MAX.
Additionally, you can use MAX to configure Resman to run 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 VXI
controller such as a VXIpc. You can configure the computer to run Resman
at startup, so when you power the chassis, Resman runs. Power cycling the
chassis reboots the embedded PC, causing Resman to run again.
With the PCI-MXI-2 or PXI-8320, you may need to run the Resman utility
if you boot your computer before turning 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 NI-VXI installer gives you the option of installing some of the old
utilities. Thus, if you have a documented procedure for configuring your
system that relies on the old configuration utilities, you can install them on
your system. Use the
Custom
installer option to add the old utilities.
However, certain very old utilities are now obsolete and are no longer part
of NI-VXI.
You can optionally install VIC for users familiar with this interactive VXI
utility. Also, the MAX configuration panels are in many cases identical to
the panels in T&M Explorer.
