Solaris v2.0 SB-GBIB driver changes

[Bradford Castalia]

We've upgraded the Solaris driver for our SB-GPIB
board from v1.3 to v.2.0 to allow use in the 64-bit
OS environment. Our application uses the 488M
functions and has been stable for many years. The
new driver has changed functionality so that the
applilcation no longer works correctly. The device is
the same (and a brand new device has the same
problems) and the application code is unchanged.
Tests have proven that the same ibxxx calls produce
different results with the v2.0 driver than with the
v1.3 driver.

I've worked around the device initialization sequence
problems so I am now able to communicate again with
the device. But the SRQs from the device are no
longer being correctly seen by an ibwait. Autopolling
is en
able, as before, so my application is unhappy
at only getting a timeout even though the device
itself shows that the operation correctly completed
(and thus the SRQ was transmitted).

Does anyone have experience with the new v2.0
SB-GPIB driver for Solaris and might be able to
provide some insight into how to get things back
on track?

[Kevin_work]

Bradford Castalia wrote:

> We've upgraded the Solaris driver for our SB-GPIB
> board from v1.3 to v.2.0 to allow use in the 64-bit
> OS environment. Our application uses the 488M
>

> Does anyone have experience with the new v2.0
> SB-GPIB driver for Solaris and might be able to
> provide some insight into how to get things back
> on track?

I dont have any experience with this though I did contact
support because I am about to go to the PCI and 64 bit OS.

I was led to believe that 1) You have to ask for the 64 bit version
specifically
and 2) the SB-GPIB does not support the 64 bit driver.

I could be a bit confused, since we discussed many things in the
conversation.
I would suggest you contact NI support. Also if you resolve (or fail to
) the problems
I would be
most grateful if you would share them.

Good Luck
Kevin Kent

[eric s.]

We are running Solaris 5 & 7 (SunOS 5.5 & 5.7 according to uname -a) with the Solaris 2.x drivers and SB-GPIB cards with no problems at all as far as I know. I have used ibwait to wait for SRQ events and it works fine.

However we are having problems with the PCI-GPIB cards and the 2.x drivers. They do not return the status byte information correctly, for example if you use ReadStatusByte it returns garbage most of the time, as does checking the status after sending commands such as ibwrt. SendIFC does not help with this problem either. This is a **BIG** problem for us right now, and we are having to downgrade systems back to boxes that have SB slots in them so we can run our software. I would avoid the PCI-GPIB cards and the Solaris 2.x drivers like the plague if you
are going to be checking status bytes, as my understanding is that National no longer supports this driver so they won't be fixing any problems with it. Of course they will still happily sell it to you...

Eric