VISA Interactive Control does not see my device

[Y3G]

Hi,
I am using a NI USB-GPIB. The MAX can see the device and even can communicate with it but the VISA Interactive Controle Utility does not recognize it. That is the reason why my software is not reacting too it since I used VISA reads/writes.
I attached a NI-report to it so you can what is missing (if).
Note that I have installed my software on several stations and it worked.
What do I miss in here?
Thanks
Yariv3G

[Ray.R]

Hi Yariv,

I seem to recall a similar experience with the NI USB-GPIB. However this was 3 or 4 years ago.
If my memory serves me right, it was a simple matter of using the CD that came with the USB-GPIB to install the drivers. Although they were available on other NI-GPIB products, it appeared that unless the driver from the original CD's that came with the USB-GPIB were used to install the drivers, the device could not be seen or could not be used (ie detect devices connected to the GPIB bus).

Since re-installing the driver solved our problem, we never investigated the issue any further.

We were using Win-2000 at the time with LV6.1. The USB-GPIB allowed the flexibility to develop LV code at my desk and easily bring the code and equipment to the lab to validate the new vi's.

I seem to recall that the perfomance of the USB-GPIB was slower than the PCI version. Of course we were transferring screen captures from a spectrum analyzer for storage on a file server.

Hope this helps,

JLV

[Shawn B.]

It looks like you have all of the software you need installed, so my guess is that you have a bad VISA install. There are newer versions of both NI-488.2 (the driver for your GPIB-USB), and NI-VISA. I would try installing these newer versions and hopefully it will fix your problem.

Shawn B.
National Instruments

[Ray.R]

Thanks Shawn,

My memory was not 100% accurate. We did re-install both NI-488.2 (specific to the USB) and NI-VISA.
If I recall they both had to be of the same "vintage".

😄

[Y3G]

---

@JoeLabView wrote:
Thanks Shawn,

My memory was not 100% accurate. We did re-install both NI-488.2 (specific to the USB) and NI-VISA.
If I recall they both had to be of the same "vintage".

😄

---

Shawn,JoeLV,
Thanks I made it by re-installing Visa and 488.2 several times and ven in an order I don't recall anymore. Although it works now, it took me half a day to investigate the issue too much time for something that works on several stations ?! What I did was comparing the NI-reports.txt from a station that works with the non-working station, I found out that the non-working station had LV RunTimeEngine 7.0 & 7.1. I uninstalled the RTEngine 7.0 ,which forced me naturally to reinstall VISA and 488.2.

National Instrument: Please elaborate what went wrong and how can I prevent long "Flushing" hours at the customer.

Thanks Guys.

[Ray.R]

Unfortunately...

"flushing" hours is something that is somethimes difficult to avoid.

Strange... we had a similar conversation yesterdays on having to re-do hardware setups (which take 1/2 a day) simply because someone "borrowed" something and didn't put it back properly.. And other instances such as that.

We had come up with Standard Operating Procedures for doing software releases... Things that are consistent and repeatable. But when it comes to development, setting up the work environment, libraries and installing software.. it's a different story. Especially "trying out" the latest and greatest releases of development tools. Aiye Caramba.. You can quickly loose several days just because of ... euh.. let's call it "unexpected events"..

To the customers??? well they are basically interested in the bottom line: >> will it be ready on time <<
..
... and within budget.. (Of course everybody want everything faster and cheaper)..

All that to say that it is difficult to avoid such situations. Not the best advice, mind you, but a glimpse of reality.

I'm glad things are working..

Remember to have fun!!

😄

JLV

[Shawn B.]

yariv3G,

As you said, you equipment worked fine on several other stations, but this station had an issue. As Joe pointed out it would be nice if everything always just worked, but with so many variables in the mix some times you just have to sit down and troubleshoot.

How do you avoid long flush times? Well, try to solve the problem intelligently. I know that is an ambiguous statement, so I will give my recommendation.

1. Check the KnowledgeBases to see if this is a known issue.
2. Search the Forums to see if any customers like yourself have run into the same problem.

Now here the next steps could go anywhere depending on your knowledge of the product and the issue itself.

If you don't know the product very well:

3. Post on the forums then while you wait for your reply do some research (read the manual, tutorials, google...)

If you did know the product pretty well you might just start logically picking apart the problem, then run through the steps you come up with. Here is what I would have done in your situation and why:

Communicating with your device worked fine in MAX. So, NI-488.2 worked fine (MAX makes calls directly to the NI-488.2 driver, ie ibwrt, ibrd). The VISA Interactive control wouldn't find your instrument. So, NI-VISA is probably messed up.

3. Reinstall NI-VISA, and if there is a newer version available you might as well use that since it probably has some bug fixes.

Still doesn't work? Well, how does VISA work? VISA Simply makes calls into other drivers so in your case VISA will make calls to the NI-488.2 driver. So maybe NI-488.2 works fine, but the driver (DLL) might be named something different, in a different location, perhaps you have two copies of it. My next steps would be.

4. Uninstall NI-488.2, and install the latest version. If it still doesn't work reinstall VISA again to make sure it finds the driver.


Hope this helps, or at least gives a better idea of what might have happened.

Shawn B.
National Instruments