© National Instruments Corporation
3-1
NI-VXI User Manual
Software Overview
Chapter
3
This chapter describes the C/C++ and BASIC usage of VXI and VME
functions and briefly describes each function. Functions are listed
alphabetically in each functional group.
System Configuration Functions
The VXI system configuration functions copy all of the Resource
Manager (RM) table information into data structures at startup so that
you can find device names or logical addresses by specifying certain
attributes of the device for identification purposes.
Initializing and closing the NI-VXI software interface, and getting
information about devices in the system are among the most important
aspects of the NI-VXI software. All applications need to use the system
configuration functions at one level or another. When the NI-VXI RM
runs, it logs the system configuration information in the RM table file,
resman.tbl
. The
InitVXIlibrary
function reads the information
from
resman.tbl
into data structures accessible from the
GetDevInfo
and
SetDevInfo
functions. From this point on, you can
retrieve any device-related information from the entry in the table. In
most cases you do not need to modify resource manager information.
However, you can use
SetDevInfo
functions to modify the
information in the table. In this manner, both the application and the
driver functions have direct access to all the necessary VXI/VME
system information. Your application must call the
CloseVXIlibrary
function upon exit to free all data structures and disable interrupts.
The following paragraphs describe the system configuration functions.
The descriptions are presented at a functional level describing the
operation of each function.