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Other error conditions – National Instruments GPIB-PC User Manual

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Appendix B

Common Errors and Their Solutions

©National Instruments Corp.

B-7

GPIB-PC User Manual

Other Error Conditions

Listed below are general errors which may occur when using the GPIB-
PC hardware and software.

Error Condition: Attempts to run the GPIB utility programs,

IBDIAG

,

IBTEST

, or

IBIC

and returns

Bad command or File Name

error

from DOS. Also, the distribution files do not appear to be on the boot
disk after running

IBSTART

.

Solution:

IBSTART

copies the files to the subdirectory

\GPIB-PC

on the

boot disk. Only

GPIB.COM

and

IBCONF.EXE

are copied to

the root directory. Change to the

\GPIB-PC

directory with the

DOS command

cd \GPIB-PC

to run other programs.

Error Condition: Function call does not return and the program seems
to hang forever.

Solutions:

Run

IBCONF

and confirm that the board's DMA channel and

interrupt line match the hardware settings. Then run

IBTEST

after rebooting. Also check that the DMA channel and interrupt
line do not conflict with other devices in the computer.

Check that the time limit is not set to zero, which results in
infinite time limits. To do this, run

IBCONF

and look at the

time limit value both for your device and your board. Or, from

IBIC

, call

IBTMO

and pass to it the timeout argument value

you believe is correct (the default is 13, which represents 10
seconds). Assuming that the

IBTMO

call does not result in an

error, the previous value returned by the call will equal the
value passed to it if the time limit was what you expected.

Check that you do not call

IBWAIT

for an event that may not

happen without also waiting for TIMO as well. For example, if
you fail to set the TIMO bit while waiting for RQS from a
device, and for some reason the device will not assert SRQ, the

IBWAIT

call will not return.