GPIB card compatibility

[Philip Frampton]

I googled for a newsgroup FAQ and couldn't find one,
sorry if there is and this is answered in it.

I have a labview program written on a machine with a
genuine NI GPIB card. I am planning on running the program
on a different machine, for which I have to buy another
GPIB card. My question is, will I be able to plug in any
Labview compatible GPIB card (non NI manufactured) or
will I have to edit the VI's in the program.

One reason I ask is that NI quote 550 pounds for PCI card,
Adept quote 315 pounds and a German company, have quoted me 200
euros (about 130 pounds). The German firm, Quancom, have
replied to my e-mail saying the card is compatible with
Labview but I will need to incorporate their Send and Receive VIs.

And as a seperate no
te, has anyone had any success getting a
PC2 (eg Brainbox 488) GPIB working in Labview 6.i running on
win 98.

Thank you for your time,
Philip

[LesHammer]

Hmmm, how to say this without saying something negative. ---
Quancom is promising that there is some work for you to do -- update the Send/Receive VIs.
Adept hasn't promised anything, but most likely they won't be free of work either.
What do you have more of - time or money? Take your pick.
You'll spend one or the other. And if you choose to spend the time,
remember you'll be spending it each time you update the program because
you'll need a different version for each computer.

Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com

[Philip Frampton]

Les Hammer wrote:
> Hmmm, how to say this without saying something negative. ---
> Quancom is promising that there is some work for you to do -- update
> the Send/Receive VIs.
> Adept hasn't promised anything, but most likely they won't be free of
> work either.
> What do you have more of - time or money? Take your pick.
> You'll spend one or the other. And if you choose to spend the time,
> remember you'll be spending it each time you update the program
> because
> you'll need a different version for each computer.
>
> Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com

Is it normal to have a VI specific to a GPIB card. I thought that the
ability and method to communicate with GPIB was inherent in LabView.
I didn't understand why the company distributes VIs aswell as

Windows drivers for a card that is supposed to be a plug and play GPIB.

Philip

[Dennis_Knutson]

The only experience I've had with non-NI gpib cards is a gpib card from HP (Agilent). I installed their VISA drivers and used the LabVIEW VISA functins and everything worked fine. I could switch back and forth between computers with NI and HP cards. The LabVIEW GPIB functions are only for communicating directly to NI-GPIB.dll which is only for NI cards. There is no layer between the two as in VISA. Anytime you interface directly to hardware, you need specific functions provided by the vendor of the hardware. The same is true of daq hardware or any other card in your computer. Think of VISA as the same sort of API as the DirectX functions for video and sound.

Converting your program to VISA is a good idea in any case. And if you want to
use other gpib cards, just make sure they come with VISA drivers and not just replacements for the read and write gpib functions.

[LesHammer]

This may be part of the problem. Does anybody besides NI and Agilent/HP make
a VISA? (OK, I know Tektronics has one, but theirs is based on NI.)
Unless the seller of the GPIB card supplies a VISA that works with
that card, no LabVIEW VISA functions will work. And since the LV GPIB VI
functions only work with NI GPIB cards, you need a LV VI for any GPIB
calls through the non-NI GPIB card.

In conclusion, if the non-NI GPIB card manufacturer supplies a VISA,
your job is easy - just install the new VISA. If they don't provide VISA,
you have a lot of work to do.

Les.Hammer@CompleteTest.com