Problem with Agilent VXI E1420B Driver

[davelclark]

I'm having problems with the E1420B VXIpnp driver found in the instrument driver network. I wasn't sure where to report the problem so I'm posting it here.

We have been using the instrument and the driver in one of our test systems for quite some time without problems. Recently we upgraded the PC in the system from a old 300MHz Win 95 machine to a new 1.6GHz WinXP machine. Now the function hpe1420b_meas_fetch() randomly returns "Query Interrupted" errors. Also a call to hpe1420b_device_clear() imediately followed by hpe1420b_reset() seems to cause the same error.

The hard part about debugging these errors is that they don't seem to occur when the application is compiled in debug mode. I'm guessing its a speed issue.


Since we already have quite a bit of software already using this driver my solution has been to simply always run the debuggable executable of these programs. This seems to be working.

I can give more details, including source code, if anybody is interested in pursuing this issue. I mainly want to make everybody aware of it.

David Clark
Software Design Engineer
C&H Technologies, Inc.
dlclark@chtech.com
512-733-2621

[btejani]

David,

We would like to pursue this issue and determine if it is a hardware or software bug. We've received and resolved more of these timing issues as computers have gotten faster.

Please run the same test using a release build, but while running NI-Spy to log the VISA/VXI function calls. Then send the spy log file and source code to instrument.driver@ni.com.

We will look into the issue.

Thanks,
--Bankim

Bankim Tejani
National Instruments
Instrument Drivers/IVI

[d_a_c]

Hi, I am in the process of adding instrument error checking to some applications that we are running on a Teradyne Spectrum VXI platform and have come across the problem described in this article. As there seems to be no response from NI attached to this post do you know if this was ever resolved?