Direct control from dos using ccl – Measurement Computing Personal488 rev.3.0 For DOS & Windows 3.Xi User Manual

Page 67

8D. Getting Started

II. SOFTWARE GUIDES - 8. Driver488/DRV

II-52

Personal488 User’s Manual, Rev. 3.0

Finally,

EXIT

causes

KBC

to terminate:

IEEE> EXIT

As already mentioned,

KBC

obeys the standard DOS editing keys. In using these editing keys, the

previous command is used as a template. Characters from the template are copied into the current
command line under control of the editing keys. These editing keys, coupled with the ability to retrieve
previous commands, greatly ease the task of trying various Driver488/DRV commands.

The editing keys and their actions are:

Editing Key

Editing Function

or <

Æ>

Copies one character from the template to the command line.

char

Copies characters from the template to the command line up to the character

specified.

Copies all remaining characters from the template to the command line.

char

Skips over (does not copy) characters from the template up to the character

specified.

Replaces the template with the current command line.

Skips over (does not copy) one character in the template.

Toggles insert mode. When insert mode is off (the default) characters from

the template are skipped as characters are entered from the keyboard.
When insert mode is on, no characters in the template are skipped.

Clears the command line and leaves the template unchanged.

Direct Control from DOS Using CCL

Because Driver488/DRV is a standard MS-DOS device driver, any program that can read and write
characters to files can control the IEEE 488 bus. In particular, MS-DOS (and PC-DOS) provide
several commands that can communicate directly with Driver488/DRV. To begin communication, it is
helpful to turn on the Driver488/DRV automatic error display:

C:\> ECHO ERROR ON> IEEE

and tell Driver488/DRV to end its responses with an end-of-file character (

control-Z, ASCII 26

C:\> ECHO FILL $26> IEEE

Note the format of these commands: the DOS command

ECHO

, followed by the Driver488/DRV

command

ERROR ON

FILL $26

, which is redirected by the

to a file named

IEEE

. When

ECHO

tries to write the command to

IEEE

, DOS notices that

IEEE

is the name of a device driver, not a file,

and so sends the command to the device driver which of course is Driver488/DRV.

Once the input terminator is initialized to the end-of-file character, DOS can be used to get responses
from Driver488/DRV and the attached IEEE 488 bus devices.

First, we can use the

HELLO

command to display the Driver488/DRV revision identification:

Then check the Driver488/DRV status:

C:\> ECHO STATUS> IEEE
C:\> TYPE IEEE
CS21 1 I000 000 T0 C0 P0 OK

The following indicators describe each component of the Driver488/DRV status: