Chapter 3
Developing Your Application
VXI-1394 Interface for Windows NT/98
3-2
www.ni.com
T&M Explorer presents a graphical display of your entire test and
measurement system to help you configure various components. When you
launch T&M Explorer, you see all your VXI, GPIB, GPIB-VXI, and serial
devices on the screen. You can add devices that cannot be detected
dynamically by T&M Explorer through the Add Device Wizard in the
Edit menu. Such devices include VME devices, certain GPIB devices, and
serial ports. You can view the properties (such as logical address, address
space used, primary address, and so on) of each device by right-clicking on
the device in the tree. When you view the properties of most National
Instruments devices, you can configure the hardware settings directly in the
property pages.
T&M Explorer and Resman are designed to work together. You can run the
Resource Manager through T&M Explorer by either clicking on the
Run Resource Manager button on the toolbar, or selecting
Tools»VXI Resource Manager. From Tools»Options, you can also
configure T&M Explorer to run Resman automatically when the computer
boots up. Resman reports all errors that it finds in your system to T&M
Explorer. When you view your system through T&M Explorer, you can
easily spot any errors in your system that Resman found.
You can find more information about T&M Explorer by using its online
help. From T&M Explorer, select Help»Help Topics.
Device Interaction
After Resman has detected and configured all VXI/VME devices, you can
view specific information on each device in your system by using the T&M
Explorer utility. This utility includes a System View, which contains a
description for each device, including each VXI device’s logical address.
VISAIC and VIC
You can interact with your VXI/VME devices by using either the VIC or
VISAIC utility (VIC for NI-VXI or VISAIC for NI-VISA). You can use
these utilities to interactively control your VXI/VME devices without
having to use a conventional programming language, LabVIEW, or
LabWindows/CVI.
Note
You can launch VIC or VISAIC from the Tools menu in T&M Explorer.
Try the following in VIC. In the Command entry field, type:
help vxiinreg