ibdev vs OpenDev

[Anders]

Okies for IVI purposes the helpfile says
use Opendev for both ibfind and ibdev. A
change would then look something like this?
pcGPIB pci GPIB card
lc8901 camac lecroy 8901 GPIB card.

int lc8901;
lc8901 = ibdev(0,2,N0_SAD,10s,1,0);

OpenDev(pcGPIB,0);
ibpad(lc8901,2);

and the specifik commands to set timeout and EOS.
or am I totally wrong? if so how do I make the change to Opendev instead of ibdev and ibfind for a virtual?

/anders

[Randy Solomonson]

Hello-

The ibdev command is far preferred over OpenDev. However, both will probably work. ibdev frees the user from the necessity to configure the device templates to include the device. The best solution is to use VISA's viOpen command and use VISA commands instead of GPIB commands. Then this application can port from GPIB to any VISA bus (VXI, serial, ethernet).

Randy Solomonson
Application Engineer
National Instruments

[rorOttawa]

Sorry, but I do not like the answer.

That VISA code was written by someone on drugs...
One member of our team tried it once for a scope and never got it working and wasted alot of time !!!

Another member of the team tried to use it when he was with another company with the same frustrating result..

As I see it !!

Also in CVI 6, the function panels say to use opendev
and NOT to use ibdev, but in the example that came with CVI, ibdev is used and you also say to use ibdev.
Very confusing !!!

It seems to me that it would be a simple task to write a function that searchs the GPIB bus for the desired instrument regardless of it's address.

Why does NI not supply such a function ?

As stated before in other comments, I find the functions su
pplied with CVI, of a very poor quality
and simplicity.
i.e. try to use WFM_from_Disk function: a function that can not be stopped and uses 77% of CPU !!