Chapter 3
NI-VXI Software Installation and Configuration
© National Instruments Corporation
3-11
VXI-AT2022/NI-VXI SCO UNIX Getting Started
Exiting vxitedit and Reinitializing the Hardware
To exit
vxitedit
, type the number
11
when the main menu is displayed or type
exit
. If you
changed any information, the program prompts you to save your changes before exiting the menu.
Saving the configuration information updates the configuration files
vxila.cfg
and
vxibus.cfg
. Do not modify the
vxidev.cfg
file, which contains some system-dependent
timer information used by the
vxiinit
program. Run
vxiinit.exe
to reinitialize the hardware
according to the new settings.
If you changed any of the software configuration settings from the default settings, record the new
settings on the VXI-AT2022 Hardware and Software Configuration Form in Appendix C.
Developing Your Application Program
After you have verified that the driver software has been installed successfully, you can begin to
develop your VXI application software. Be sure to check the
readme.doc
file for the latest
application development notes. Remember that you must run the
vxiinit
initialization program
before performing any VXI operations and after each system reset.
Use the VXI Text Interactive Control (
victext
) program to communicate with VXI devices
through commands you enter at the keyboard. This feature helps you learn how to communicate
with devices, troubleshoot problems, and develop your application.
The
victext
command set includes the same capability of NI-VXI function calls in addition to
auxiliary commands that are unique to
victext
. You can use this utility to send data and Word
Serial commands to devices from the keyboard and to display data received from devices on the
screen. After each function executes,
victext
displays the device's response and the status.
The
victext
utility is designed to help you learn how to use the NI-VXI functions to program
devices. Once you develop a sequence of steps that works successfully for your system, you can
easily incorporate the sequence into an application program using appropriate language and syntax.
The file
cvxi
.
c
interfaces between your C language application program and the operating system
entry points to the VXI driver. The functions available in
cvxi
.
c
are described in detail in the NI-
VXI Software Reference Manual for C. To use these functions, you must link to
cvxi
.
o
. The NI-
VXI C language interface file,
cvxi.o
, included with your software distribution, is a combined
object file from
cvxi.c
and
IO.c
. If you need to recompile the language interface, compile
cvxi.c
to a temporary object file, and link this object file with
IO.o
, using incremental linker.
Name the resulting object file
cvxi.o
to have a linkable object code for interface. To invoke
incremental linker, type the following statement:
ld -r -o cvxi.o cvxitemp.o IO.o
cvxitemp.o
is the object file created by compiling
cvxi.c
, and
cvxi.o
is the resulting object
file. Include the resulting object file during the link phase of each application compile operation.
The
/example
subdirectory contains various example programs along with a makefile that show
how to use various functions in the NI-VXI software and how to develop application programs using
these functions.
