Using MAX with VME-PCI V2718

[Joseba]

I am relatively new to the world of VME and LabVIEW, but am currently attempting to set-up a system with several VME modules for (ideally) use with LabVIEW 8.0 running on windows XP (VISA 4.3 installed). The bridge is a Caen V2718 with optical link to a A2818 PCI card. All drivers appear to be installed correctly, and I can access the VME crate using the third-party provided dynamic link library. In MAX, however, the system is recognized only as "PXI System (unidentified)", and identification files do not seem to exist for the given hardware. It is not clear whether I am wrong to even try and use MAX in this situation. Am I able to use the NI MAX and VISA resources with this hardware configuration? If not, are the VXI libraries the most efficient method of communicating with the modules? Any help or hints would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[JamesC]

Hi Joseba,

You are not going to see the VME crate in MAX, at a push you might see it in RESMAN if you install NI-VXI, however this is designed to work with NI Embedded controllers and MXI links.
You might be forced to use a Caen program to identify the chassis and see the devices. You will then probably need to ask them how there program interfaces with other programming languages (such as C) to see if and how we can get LabVIEW to talk to this create.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

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[Joseba]

Hi James,

Thanks for your reply. I am in the process of trying to get support from caen in this matter, which seems more difficult than it should be, but am continuing to try and work things out in the meantime. I've had VXI 3.3.1 installed from the beginning, but resman does not want to start up at all. There is no warning, but the application does not launch either.
I am reasonably convinced that this set-up should be able to work in theory, since caen provide LabVIEW examples for several of their modules. In the older (LV6.0) examples, the functions "In Port Old" and "Out Port Old" were used extensively within VIs such as VXIin, VXImove, etc. I have tried updating these libraries to simply use the newer polymorphic In/Out Port functions, but this didn't do the trick.
Caen also provides a  LabVIEW library file called "CAENVMELib.llb" which contains VIs for reading/writing/etc. by calling library functions from "CAENVMELib.dll". Unfortunately, when I try to show LabVIEW where this library is located (within the Call Library Function box), LabVIEW crashes with the error: "Fatal Internal Error: "extfuncdlg.cpp", line 1582 LabVIEW version 8.0".
I realize that these are primarily questions for Caen, but if you do have any ideas or further questions which might help us along, I would be most grateful for the assistance. Thanks again for taking an interest.

[JamesC]

Hi Joseba,

I have been looking into your issue and have found some forum posts regarding the the caen library, it seems it passed out a incompatible data type that we did not handle elegantly and caused LabVIEW to crash.

Caen has posted some unofficial code that fixes this issue here.
There is also a useful post here.

Regards
JamesC
NIUK and Ireland

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[Joseba]

JamesC,

Thanks very much for that. The new library did indeed link correctly, and I am now able to communicate with the PCI-VME bridge through a library of LV8.0 VIs which Caen was nice enough to export from 8.2 for me. I still don't understand how the VXI based instruments were supposed to work with this hardware, but at least I'm getting somewhere now. Thanks again for your help.

-J

[Joseba]

If anyone is reading these, and is curious about using the VXI library to talk to standard VME modules, I found this article to be useful:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/66E156B31C283CA386256FCF0071D63B

[Ced76]

Hi Joseba,

I noted that I have exactly the same VME control card, V2718 with optical connection to A2818 and I have the same problem to configure the system with MAX.  I totaly new about this system but it is my project.

(I have to build a system to mesure acquisition signal from 3D particules detector)

Concerning the programmation with labVIEW I have the same library, CAENVMELib and it work correctly but i do not understand all the fonctions. Have you create a programme to use your system, have you some example.

Thank you for your attention and your reply