printer-port access failed (LV-DSC)

[Gibbi]

Hi out there,

just having trouble with labview dsc and printing the alarm status from the engine.

I got an dcs-project (lv 6.1, dsc 6.1) that printed the alarm status at start and end of the execution of the tag-engine.

I upgraded the whole thing to labview 7.1+dsc 7.1 - converted the project-file (.scf),the database and my vi's
...and the printing doesn't work anymore.
The computer is still the same - (windows 2000), i just installed service-pack 3 additionally. Database is on a local hdd (NTFS).

The error occuring at engine-startup is the following: "Printer port access failed. Printing turned off."

so...where could be the problem in accessing this feature? is there anything wrong with access-rights, database-file or anything else?
Printing with other labview-printing functions does work (i.e. report-printing).

Hope that someone has any experiences with this task.

Thanks in advance.

Gibbi

[wha@atmel]

Hi Gibbi,

if you upgrade from LV6.xx to LV7 the "Out Port.vi's" have changed - you have to substitute
the "old" ones with these from standardpath:

C:\Program Files\National Instruments\LabVIEW 7.1\vi.lib\Platform\portaccess.llb

Hope this is already the solution to your problem.

Regards
Werner

[Gibbi]

Hi Werner,

thank you for your fast answer. unfortunatelly, i didn't describe my problem correctly - so i think your suggestion is not the right one.

the printing-process i want to start, is directly from the dsc-engine. so if you configure your scf-file you could click in the configuration window to print at start-up.
then, all alarms and events available in the actual database are printed automatically.
i could start this process also with a dsc-vi but this is locked, so that i couldn't see into the source-code.

so, there i don't have the possibility to change the port-vi's you said, because it's an dsc-internal function.

before installing the new versions of the software-packets i uninstalled labview dsc.
so, the pc has just labview 6.1, lv 7.1 and dsc 7.1 on it.

maybe, you do have another idea solving this problem?

thanks in advance

gibbi

[rolfk]

Gibbi wrote:

> Hi Werner, thank you for your fast answer. unfortunatelly, i didn't
> describe my problem correctly - so i think your suggestion is not the right
> one. the printing-process i want to start, is directly from the dsc-engine.
> so if you configure your scf-file you could click in the configuration window
> to print at start-up. then, all alarms and events available in the actual
> database are printed automatically. i could start this process also with a
> dsc-vi but this is locked, so that i couldn't see into the source-code.
> so, there i don't have the possibility to change the port-vi's you said,
> because it's an dsc-internal function.
> before installing the new versions of the software-packets i uninstalled labview
> dsc. so, the pc has just labview 6.1, lv 7.1 and dsc 7.1 on it. maybe,
> you do have another idea solving this problem?

I do believe that LabVIEW DSC 7.x does not support a line printer
anymore. Read the original post on Info-LabVIEW about this and a
possible work around here:

http://messages.info-labview.org/2004/11/01/13.html

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Gibbi]

hi rolf,

thank you for your attention. i checked out the original post referring the line-printer problem...so, i tried the same feature with a computer using a laser-printer...and it didn't work too.
is the printing-feature completely disabled?
i tried the whole thing on 4 different computers, with different printers and different user logins (i still believe there is something wrong with access rights!!). none of these had the access to the printer port..really mad!
it's a mess - i really need it immediately without doing a lot of effort to extract the correct data from the database. does anyone have already made a tool for this?

hoping to finish this never-ending story soon 😉

thanks a lot

gibbi

[Philippe_Goetz]

Hi Gibbi,

just take a look in your labview.ini file and check, if there's the following entry:
serialDevices="COM1;COM2;COM3;COM4;COM5;COM6;COM7;COM8;COM9;LPT1;LPT2;LPT3;LPT4"
This line should be placed in the LabVIEW.ini file when LabVIEW DSC is installed. It is accessed in the Tag Configuration Editor under the menu item Configure>>Events>>Printing.
Also make sure, that the printer port isn't blocked by any other application, while your attempting to print.

Regards,

Philippe Goetz

Application Engineer, NI

[Philippe_Goetz]

Remark:

The described changes in the labview.ini won't fix the problem. This feature has been removed from LabVIEW in version 7.0 and is no more supported. Unfortunately, the menu options still appear in LabVIEW 7.0 and 7.1. A workaround could be to log to a file or html page and print it if necessary.

Regards,

Philippe Goetz
Applications Engineer, National Instruments

[GValdes]

Hi, Gibbi,

Please take a look at the following document KB[3KKGDJNF]and let me know if it doesn't fix your problem.

Best regards,

GValdes
National Instruments