NI-VISA Platform-Specific and Portability Issues

NI-VISA

NI-VISA Platform-Specific and Portability Issues

The topics listed below discuss programming information for you to consider when developing applications that use the NI-VISA driver.

After installing the driver software, you can begin to develop your VISA application software. Remember that the NI-VISA driver relies on NI-488.2 and NI-VXI for driver-level I/O accesses.

  • Windows users—On VXI and MXI systems, use Measurement & Automation Explorer (MAX) to run the VXI Resource Manager (resman), configure your hardware, and assign VME and GPIB-VXI addresses. For GPIB systems, use MAX to configure your GPIB controllers. To control instruments through Serial ports, you can use MAX to change the default settings, or you can perform all the necessary configuration at run time by setting VISA attributes.
  • All other platforms—On VXI and MXI systems, you must still run the VXI Resource Manager (resman) and use the VXI Resource Editor (vxiedit or vxitedit) for configuration purposes. For GPIB and GPIB-VXI systems, you still use the GPIB Control Panel applet (Macintosh) or ibconf (UNIX) to configure your system. To control instruments through Serial ports, you can do all necessary configuration at run-time by setting VISA attributes. On UNIX, you can also use the VISA Configuration Utility (visaconf) to configure VISA aliases and change the default Serial settings.

Programming Considerations

NI Spy: Debugging Tool

Multiple Applications Using the NI-VISA Driver

Low-Level Access Functions

Interrupt Callback Handlers

Multiple Interface Support Issues

VXI and GPIB Platforms

Serial Port Support

VME Support