RESET AT-MIO-16E-10

[TUSSILE]

Hello,

I inherited an old measuring system that utilizes an AT-MIO-16E-10 card.  The PC was used in France and therefore runs Windows95 in French.  The manufacturer of the equipment is no longer in business and I do not have copies of the software we use.  We have been using the system for about a year now, but it has recently developed problems.

The system works and successfully performs a measurement check on our product once.  I then need to reboot the PC before it will completely work for the next part.  I am able to physically adjust the device with the PC without a reboot, so some communication remains.  And when I click the "measure" button the equipment moves, but no results are displayed.  Rebooting the PC is the only way to measure a second piece.  Additionally, a restart of the PC does not work.  I must do a complete shutdown and physically turn the PC back on.

It appears that the card is not getting fully reset or put in a ready state.  I'm speaking from ignorance here and only describing what is happening.

Rebooting the PC between pieces is not acceptable.  I was wondering if there was a DOS command I could issue between pieces to fully reset the card that would simulate a reboot to the card.  Or is there was some other solution that I could use to reset the card's status without physically rebooting the system.  Or if you had any other ideas that may help.  I am only assuming the problem is with the card's status, I do not know this as a fact.

Than you for any suggestions that you have.

[Kyle_A.]

Hello,

There should be two ways to reset the board without a computer restart.  One should be through Measurement and Automation Explorer (MAX) by right clicking the device and selecting Reset Device.  The other way is to use the TDAQ Reset Device VI which should be located in your Traditional DAQ palette.  When this is called, the device should reset itself. 

As far as a DOS command, I am unaware of anything that exists through DOS to rest the board, unless some derivation of what I described done in LabVIEW or MAX can be done there.

[TUSSILE]

Kyle,

Thanks for the help.  I really appreciate your response.

However, I don't have any of the applications that you mentioned on the PC, and I do not have any media with software either.  I would be concerned downloading software from your website due to the age of the card and compatability issues.

Can you provide a link to the solution(for my specific hardware) that you feel would be successful and yet be fairly easy for an end user to use many times a day?

Thanks again,

Larry

[Kyle_A.]

Hi Larry,

What application is this running with then?  LabVIEW is a product sold by us, and we no longer sell it with Win95 compatibility.  Are you using the Traditional DAQ driver?  Unfortunately my resources for products of that age are limited, and typically LabVIEW is the product used for programming applications, so I would need to figure out if it will be possible to reprogram your application or if you do not have the source code for it.  Do you have a program called Test and Measurement Explorer in the Start » Programs » National Instruments folder?

[TUSSILE]

Kyle,

The software that we run is the proprietary application that operates the physical measuring equipment and displays the results.  We do not use any National Instruments software, the manufacturer of the equipment performed all programming and setup.  They are not able to help us now though, so you are our only resource for support.

There is a folder called "NI-DAQ".  Under that are 4 subfolders:

Documents

Aide NI-DAQ     (This is help, as I mentioned earlier, this machine is from France)

Remote Device Access Server

Setup NI-DAQ

None of the programs you mentioned are on this machine that I can find.

Thanks

[Seth_B.]

Unfortunately, device reset can only happen via the NI-DAQ driver.  You will need to use an ADE like Visual Basic to write an application that calls the Reset Device function in the Traditional NI-DAQ driver.  I would recommend Traditional NI-DAQ 6.9.3, as it supports both Windows 95 and your hardware.

Please note that installing a new driver may make your previous application unstable.  I don't have any way of knowing how that application is set up, so I don't know if they depend on any old functionality or if they wrote their own driver.

Also, do you regularly have the card calibrated?  If not, and you are using the analog systems, you readings are likely badly inaccurate by now.  We only guarantee our accuracy specifications for 2 years and if the card isn't calibrated regularly, the analog measurement circuitry starts to drift over time.  I can't wager a guess as to how much it might drift, since that is entirely system dependent and this is an ancient card.  You may also consider sending the card in for repair, in case there is an issue with the card.