Instrument Control Toolbox

Using Vendor Tools to Identify and Test Your Resources

Both National Instruments and Agilent Technologies provide tools that allow you to identify, configure, and test the VISA resources in your system. These tools are usually installed in conjunction with the VXIplug&play driver. You should use these tools to

• Determine the device resource name, which is used to create a VISA instrument object. As described in Adaptor Information, you can also return the resource name with the instrhwinfo function.
• Determine if your hardware configuration is correct.

Agilent's VISA Assistant tool is shown below. The display indicates that VXI, GPIB, and GPIB-VXI interface resources are available on the system.

The VXI0::MEMACC and GPIB-VXI0::MEMACC resource names are associated with register-based communication. The Instrument Control Toolbox does not directly support these resource names. Instead, register-based communication is supported for VXI instruments with the memread, memwrite, mempoke, and mempeek functions, which are described in Register-Based Communication.

National Instruments' VISA Interactive Control tool is shown below. The display indicates that serial port interface resources are available on the system.

VISA Overview

The GPIB Interface