Problems getting TH8800 Thermotron drivers to work with windows 7

[AnalogCrazy]

Just roll your own drivers. After you do it once, you'll realize its really easy. Simply, the Thermotron takes text commends. The old 2800 controller is great and easy to work with. The 3800 controller is flakey and you need to repeat the commands twice. The first time wakes up the controller if it is sleeping. Never worked with the 8800 controller but its probably more of the same. The "driver" thing is overwrought and half the premade drivers are junk anyway. If the interface is a common one supported directly by LabView, like GPIB, then supporting a new instrument is trivial busywork. You don't need the DLLs or anything like that. Just copy the text commands from the PDF download of the instrument manual. For example, to start a Thermotron with a 2800 controller, you send "RM". To stop it you send "S". To set the temperature to 85C you send "LTS 85" if I remember correctly, To measure the temperature, you send "DTV". Send the command using the GPIB 488.2 "Send.vi". Be sure to get the board and Thermotron GPIB addresses and set "mode" to the equivalent of "NLend" which is 1.

[smercurio_fc]

Actually, it seems based on the Thermotron web site that the 8800 uses TCP/IP, not GPIB. So, while the concept is the same, you'd need to use the TCP/IP functions.

Besides, if you're going to be writing drivers for a GPIB device you should be using VISA, not the lower level GPIB functions.

[AnalogCrazy]

The way I write drivers is to use an OOP based interface abstraction layer so the drivers are interface agnostic. The interface child-class member VIs execute the interface calls; TCP/IP, VISA, low-level GPIB, RS-232 or whatever. It makes the overlying code more portable and maintainable. But for a simple Thermotron driver, that may be excessively complex.

[Crushed]

I would write my own drivers, but I'm both incredibly new to LabVIEW and programming itself.

If I took the time to sit down and think about it I probably could write the drivers, but I've only got less than a month left before I need to have this project done. So, in my mind writing my own drivers is out of the question sadly.

I'm currently installing the 32-bit version of win. 7 pro onto the computer I am trying to use. I really hope this works.

[Crushed]

Seems even using the 32-bit version of Win 7 pro doesn't help any, nor does running it in XP compatibility mode (this is not related to the XP mode vm).

As far as I can tell this dll only wants to work in a true XP environment.