Chapter 1
Introduction
©
National Instruments Corporation
1-3
If you decide to change the NI-VXI software configuration from its default
settings, refer to Chapter 3,
. This chapter
describes each field in the VXIpc Configuration Editor and the
VXI/VME-MXI-2 Configuration Editor of the vxitedit software utility. Use
the
NI-VXI Text Utilities Reference Manual
to get more information about
victext and the other configuration editors in vxitedit. Refer also to the
NI-VXI User Manual
, the
NI-VXI Programmer Reference Manual
, and the
NI-VXI online help for thorough details about NI-VXI and the groups of
NI-VXI function calls.
NI-VISA is a standard I/O application programming interface (API) for
instrumentation programming.
In its full implementation, NI-VISA can control VXI/VME, PXI, GPIB,
TCP/IP, or Serial instruments, making the appropriate driver calls
depending on the type of instrument being used. NI-VISA uses the same
operations to communicate with instruments regardless of the interface
type. For example, the NI-VISA command to write an ASCII string to a
message-based instrument is the same whether the instrument is Serial,
GPIB, or VXI. As a result, NI-VISA gives you interface independence.
This makes it easier to switch bus interfaces and means that users who must
program instruments for multiple interfaces need learn only one API.
Another advantage of NI-VISA is that it is an object-oriented API that will
easily adapt to new instrumentation interfaces as they evolve, making
application migration to the new interfaces easy.
VISA is the industry standard for developing instrument drivers. Most
current drivers written by National Instruments use NI-VISA and support
Windows, Solaris 2, VxWorks, Linux, and Macintosh, as long as the
appropriate
system
-level drivers are available for that platform. NI-VISA
for VxWorks currently supports only the VXI and Serial interfaces.
The NI-488.2 software for VxWorks kit is also included, which gives you
access to the industry-standard NI-488.2 software for controlling external
GPIB instruments through the GPIB port on the front panel. The GPIB
interface on your VXIpc controller is compatible with the NI-488 driver for
a variety of operating systems. Refer to the
GPIB Reference Manual for
VXIpc Embedded Controllers and VxWorks
for more information.
