AG N67xx Universal Instrument Driver

The help file included with the AG N67xx Universal Instrument Driver contains instrument and programming information. This readme file contains additional information about the driver.

The AG N67xx Universal Instrument Driver is a 32-bit driver that supports Microsoft® Windows® 98, Windows NT® 4.0, Windows 2000 and Windows XP operating systems. The driver conforms to all portions of the VXIplug&play driver standard that are applicable to conventional GPIB and RS-232.

Driver Features:

Conformance with the VXIplug&play standard. The only exceptions are: the driver does not have a soft front panel and it does not have a knowledge base file.
The driver can be used with any GPIB card for which the manufacturer has provided a VISA DLL.
It includes a function panel (.fp) file that allows it to be used with visual programming environments such as Agilent VEE Pro, LabWindows, and LabVIEW.
It includes a comprehensive on-line help file that complements the instrument manual.
Source code is included so that the driver can be modified if desired. The source code conforms to VXIplug&play standards.
It includes a Visual Basic include file (.bas), which contains the function calls in Visual Basic syntax, so that driver functions can be called from Visual Basic.

VISA-specific Information:

When using Agilent Technologies VXIplug&play instrument drivers, instrument addresses must all be uppercase letters. Implementation of the addressing scheme is vendor specific, and some vendors support mixed cases. However, for maximum portability, use uppercase characters only. For example, use GPIB0::5 instead of gpib0::5.

Language-specific features are not supported with this driver.

Application Development Environments:

For general instructions on using the driver with Agilent VEE Pro, Microsoft Visual C++, Microsoft Visual Basic, LabVIEW, and LabWindows/CVI, see the online help file. Following are some additional notes:

Microsoft Visual C++ 4.0 (and higher)
The four example programs demonstrate the following I/O libraries: VISA I/O library, VISA COM (with E2094M I/O library or later), and National Instruments NI-488 I/O library. Note that:

The driver uses Pascal calling conventions.
Do not build the driver in the directory in which it was installed.

Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 (and higher)
Refer to the Microsoft Visual BASIC manual for additional information on calling dynamic linking libraries.

LabWindows CVI 4.0 (and higher)
The AG N67xx driver is supplied both as a source code file and as a dynamic linking library file (dll). Using the dll form of the driver provides a number of advantages, including transportability across computer platforms and faster load time for your project. By default, LabWindows/CVI will attempt to load the source version of the instrument driver. To load the dll file you must:

Include the file agN67xx.fp in your project. This file can be found in vxipnp\winnt\agN67xx. Do not include agN67xx.c in your project.
Provide an include path for agN67xx.h. This is done by adding vxipnp\winnt\include to the include paths (CVI Project Option menu).

National Instruments GPIB Driver version 1.2:

When using National Instruments GPIB Driver version 1.2 on Windows NT, and a bus timeout occurs, an infinite series of GPIB Timeout error message boxes will appear. The solution is to upgrade to version 1.3 of the National Instruments GPIB Driver.

Online Information:

The latest version of this driver and other Agilent drivers are available on the internet at www.agilent.com/find/inst_drivers. The AG N67xx driver is located in a self-extracting archive file called N67xx.exe.

Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
© Agilent Technologies, Inc. 2005