Lori,
Again, this is a very intriguing problem. When the bus is "broken" and the offending instrument is on it, do you get the error in MAX that says that it could not find any instruments, or does it simply not tell you anything after you hit "Scan for instruments"? Looking at your SPY file, I see that response from the 4083. It's definitely a "non-standard" response, but MAX should be able to handle it. I'm thinking now that perhaps the CR's and LF's in the response might be confusing some hardware or software along the way.
In any case, you should be able to communicate with your instruments from a LabVIEW application even if they do not show up in MAX under "Scan for instruments". Just specify the
name in the IO Name constant or control in the standard way, "GPIB0::x::INSTR" where x is the address of the instrument. You will need to right click on the VISA control and select "allow undefined names" for this to work properly.
I will investigate your error further and work internally to see exactly what is going on. If you are unable to get your application working, please post here again.
Thanks,
Scott B.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments
