Chapter 2
Installation and Configuration
©
National Instruments
2-21
Drivers and Software
If you purchased a system that came preinstalled with Windows, your hard
drive includes a directory called
images
in its root that contains software
for the peripherals.
In the
images
directory, you will find a
drivers
directory. The
drivers
directory contains driver installers for the system peripherals. These files
and directories are copied exactly from the manufacturer distribution disks,
so the naming conventions vary from peripheral to peripheral.
PXI Features
PXI Trigger Connectivity
The SMB connector on the NI PXI-8820 front panel can connect to or from
any PXI backplane trigger line. A trigger allocation process is needed to
prevent two resources from connecting to the same trigger line, resulting in
the trigger being double-driven and possibly damaging the hardware. At
the time of this manual’s publication, this software is not yet available for
Windows. Contact National Instruments for more information.
Chassis Configuration
The PXI Platform Services software installed on your controller and
available on the
National Instruments Driver DVD
or
PXI Platform
Services DVD
included with your kit automatically identifies your PXI
system components to generate a
pxisys.ini
file. You can configure
your entire PXI system and identify PXI-1 chassis through Measurement &
Automation Explorer (MAX), included with your controller. MAX creates
the
pxisys.ini
file, which defines your PXI system parameters. MAX
also provides an interface to route and reserve triggers so dynamic routing,
through drivers such as DAQmx, avoids double-driving and potentially
damaging trigger lines. For more information about routing and reserving
PXI triggers, refer to KnowledgeBase
3TJDOND8
,
Using PXI Timing and
Triggering Functionality
, at
ni.com/support
.
The configuration steps for single or multiple-chassis systems are the same.