GPIB communication possible through Visa interactive control, not with Labview

[Bap2703]

Hello,

I have a problem communicating with GPIB instruments through Labview (with the visa functions).

I get:

"Error -1073807298 occurred at VISA Open

Possible reason(s):

VISA:  (Hex 0xBFFF003E) Could not perform operation because of I/O error."

However it works with visa interactive control and that's where I am puzzled!

Here my configuration :

- Labview 2011 evaluation

- VISA 5.1.2

- KUSB-488B with associated drivers (USB to GPIB adapter from Keithley)

Since I can talk with my instruments in visaic I assume the installation of the drivers for the Keithley interface is ok.

In NI I/O trace I see commands beeing passed by Labview to VISA so they "see" each other.

I found a thread where somebody had the same issue and his solution was to downgrade to Labview 8.5.1, what is not possible for me.

http://forums.ni.com/t5/Instrument-Control-GPIB-Serial/keithley-2700-driver-problems/td-p/1474212/pa...

Do you have any idea to solve this problem?

Regards,

Baptiste

[Bap2703]

I am making progress, it worked on another machine.

I still have two possibilities:

- it might be related to the order in which I installed the different driver/software: driver, visa, labview where it works and the opposite where I have the problem (labview, visa, driver)

- or it could be due to the different versions of Labview used : 64 bits on the machine where it doesn't work, 32 bits where it works (both 2011 evaluation)

[Mathieu_P.]

Hello Bap2703,

The good installation process is: 1.LabVIEW, 2.NI-VISA, 3.Instrument drivers. I don't think it can come from here.

I also doubt of possible problem on 64bits. Do you have tried to open communication directly by using NI-VISA ?

Regards

[Bap2703]

Thanks for your answer.

I tried before seeing it: reinstalling everything was not successful, the problem is still there.

I didn't try to switch for the 32 bit version.

What do you mean by using directly NI-VISA ? I thought VisaIC was the closest to visa I could do, except calling the visa dll myself from Labview.

At the moment a workaround is to use a VISA server on the PC where the communication is functional and make my gpib tunnel through the network. That's kind of the biggest GPIB adapter ever seen but it works...

Ultimately I am still looking for a better solution.

[Bap2703 · Accepted solution]

Here's a follow up on this issue.

I tried with Labview 32 bits on the main machine: it works.

The fun part is that I have to use Labview 64 bits.

So the ultimate solution is now to run a visa server and client on the machine: Labview 32 bits can access my GPIB ressources directly, Labview 64 bits has to pass through the network loopback.