NI-PCIE-6259 and NI-VISA, visaconf working???

[iree]

System
Intel Pentium 4 CPU 3.80GHz stepping 03
Linux Fedora Core 5 (2.6.15 configured and built with 8k stack)

National Instruments
NI-PCIE-6259 M Series DAQ
./updateNIDrivers (Successful)
NI-VISA for Linux x86 Version 4.0. (Installed OK)
NI-KAL for linux/x86 32-bit, Version 1.4. (Installed OK)
NI-DAQmx 8.0 for Linux(r)/x86 32-bit (Not Installed, install script does not work with symbolic links)

Logged in as root, command results:

lspci -vvvx
04:00.0 Class ff00: National Instruments Unknown device 717f
Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 32, Cache Line Size 10
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
        Region 0: Memory at 50101000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Region 1: Memory at 50100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
00: 93 10 7f 71 17 00 80 02 00 00 00 ff 10 20 00 00
10: 00 10 10 50 00 00 10 50 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
20: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
30: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0a 01 00PXI4::0

scanpci -v
pci bus 0x0004 cardnum 0x00 function 0x00: vendor 0x1093 device 0x717f
 National Instruments  Device unknown
  STATUS    0x0280  COMMAND 0x0017
  CLASS     0xff 0x00 0x00  REVISION 0x00
  BIST      0x00  HEADER 0x00  LATENCY 0x20  CACHE 0x10
  BASE0     0x50101000  addr 0x50101000  MEM
  BASE1     0x50100000  addr 0x50100000  MEM
  MAX_LAT   0x00  MIN_GNT 0x00  INT_PIN 0x01  INT_LINE 0x0a
  BYTE_0    0xac  BYTE_1  0xac  BYTE_2  0x00  BYTE_3  0x00

./visaconf
- Serial
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR

After studying:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=90&message.id=443&query.id=130633#M443
I downloaded inf.zip and copied the unzipped nimxbase.inf to /usr/local/natinst/nipal/etc/inf
Rebooted and got:

./visaconf
- Serial
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
- Unknown
    - PXI4::0::INSTR

It seems the results should indicate PCIE-6259, the nimxbase.inf has the lines:

[1093717F.AddReg]
HKR,,DeviceClass,1,72,65,73,75
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\National Instruments\Common\NI-PAL Database\NI-VXI\PCI\1093717F","HowToSquelch",0,"W16 BAR1 0x00000104 0x0800;"
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\National Instruments\Common\NI-PAL Database\NI-VXI\PCI\1093717F","IsThisMine0",0,"C16 BAR1 0x00000104 0x0020 0x0020;"
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\National Instruments\Common\NI-PAL Database\NI-VXI\PCI\1093717F","numIsThisMineEntries",0x00010001,1
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\National Instruments\Common\NI-PAL Database\NI-VXI\PCI\1093717F","EmergencyDisarm",0,"W32 BAR0 0x00000500 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000600 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000700 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000800 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000900 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000A00 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000B00 0x00000004;W32 BAR0 0x00000C00 0x00000004;W16 BAR1 0x00000192 0x0000;W16 BAR1 0x00000176 0x0000;"
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\National Instruments\Common\NI-PAL Database\NI-VXI\PCI\1093717F","ManufName",0,"National Instruments"
HKLM,"SOFTWARE\National Instruments\Common\NI-PAL Database\NI-VXI\PCI\1093717F","ModelName",0,"PCIe-6259"

What should the results of running the visaconf utility look like?

                                                                                                        

[garretth]

Hello iree,

Is the issue that you are unable to communicate with your 6259? Here are a couple suggestions:

Do you have a PXI chassis connected or are you just working on the PCI bus? If you are using a PXI chassis then you willI want to make sure you have it correctly setup. 

Also, the PCI Express bus is not supported in NI-DAQmx Base until version 2.0. If you have a previous version then you will need to upgrade. You can download the newest version here.

Hopefully this is helpful.

[iree]

Hi Garret,

I am just using the PCI bus, no PXI chassis is connected.

I just want to write a kernel module to interface to the board. From what I have read, it seems that all I need is VISA and the M series register map which I have. I tried loading NI-DAQmx just to see if I it would work.

I am tryijng to figure out why visaconf gives the following results. Seems that it should should give some information as to tbe board type (PCIE-6259).

./visaconf
- Serial
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
    - ASRL1::INSTR
- Unknown
    - PXI4::0::INSTR

Does this ouput of visaconf look correct to you?

Thanks...

[garretth]

Hey Iree,

Sorry I circumvented your original question... I was interested in exactly what you were trying to do. The output from visaconf looks normal. Your PCIe card will show up as a PXI device in VISA. That's just how the driver references it.

DAQmx Base 2.0 does include support for the M-series PCIe cards on Linux machines. Fedora Core 5 is not officially supported but you certainly may be able to get it to work. There are several forum posts out there on the topic. In case you haven't seen it yet, here is a post on how to use DAQmx with Fedora.

Best regards,