NI GPIB-USB-HS lockup after first command

[Matt Martin]

When using NI’s GPIB-USB-HS as a bus interface under HTBasic 9.3, the first command sent to an instrument causes the driver to lock up on our PC.
After this happens, HTBasic no longer responds.
In fact, windows won’t even shut down unless the GPIB-USB-HS physically unplugged from the PC.
Is this a known issue ? Is there a way to prevent it ?

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

What driver are you loading in HTBasic? Are you using the load bin statement or the device setup to load the driver? Are you able to communicate with your device successfully using the NI MAX software?

FYI, HTBasic 9.3 is a very old version and In our newer versions of HTBasic, we have added a new driver that uses the VISA libraries and it may work better for you. You can download a trial version of our latest version at the following location: https://transera.com/download/htbasic-2021-trial/

Thanks,

Pat

[Matt Martin]

Thanks Pat,

We had been using the GPIBNI driver loaded thru device setup.

Some more background:
NiMAX works find and other code platforms successfully use this same hardware on a daily basis.
Previously this basic code had run on an bus-based GPIB card, so the usb-gpib-hs is what changed.
The entire setup is rather dated, running under win 7.

Thanks for the pointer – I installed the 2021 trial demo.
The Device Driver Selection screen identifies the devices on the GPIB bus using the VISA driver and lists them as “verified” (good!).
However, when I select any of these and click “add selected device” I get an “Unable to add Driver” error. (presumably bad)
Is there a missing step here ? not much in the manual on this

Just for info the 2021 trial demo still locks up GPIBNI when I attempt to run our code with that driver loaded !

Thanks,
Matt

[PatB]

Looking into why you are “Unable to add driver” using the trial version, I found that the Trial version build inadvertently does not contain the driver file. That is a mistake on our part that we will get resolved with our next release. I will email you the driver file so you can get past this error. Let us know if you run into any additional issues.

Thanks,

Pat

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

Your company email server blocked the email so I am posting a link to the driver here: https://transera.com/download/visa-driver/

Download this file and place the VISA.dw6 file in your HTBasic 2021 Trial install folder.

Thanks,

Pat

[Matt Martin]

Hello Pat,

Thank you for providing the driver.
I’ve added it to C:\Program Files\HTBasic 2021 Trial and unfortunately behavior is the same – unable to load the driver.

Matt

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

To try and diagnose further, the first time you mentioned getting an error of “Unable to Add Driver”. Adding the visa.dw6 in should have resolved that error and allowed “add selected device” to succeed. In todays post you mention getting “unable to load the driver”. To confirm, are you now able to add the driver correctly, but now get an error when “Loading” the driver? Or are you still getting the “Unable to Add Driver” error?

Thanks,
Pat

[Matt Martin]

Clarification: The message I get on attempting to add a device from the GPIB bus using the VISA driver is “Unable to add Driver”.

[Matt Martin]

Pat,

Is there any other guidance ? Any debug/logging we can do ?

Thanks,
Matt

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

Sorry for the delay, I have been out of town on business for the past week.

I just tested installing the trial version on a different machine and then dropping in the visa.dw6 file and was able to successfully add the visa driver. Looking into code, the only reason it would give the message “Unable to add Driver” is if it can’t find the visa.dw6 file. Can you confirm you unzipped the provided file and then dropped the visa.dw6 file into the HTBasic 2021 Trial folder? For example i pasted the visa.dw6 file into my “C:\Program Files (x86)\HTBasic 2021 Trial” folder.

Thanks,

Pat

[Matt Martin]

I’ve re-confirmed VISA.dw6 is present in “C:\Program Files\HTBasic 2021 Trial” folder, and permissions appear to match the other .DW6 files.
Even tried a few combinations of filename capitalizations.
Is there any config which needs to point to this file ?

The only other issue I can imagine is some security protection software preventing access.

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

Very Odd. I have tried the same on multiple computers with no issue. In case it has something to do with copying the file on your machine, I did what I should have done to begin with and made a new Trial build of HTBasic that contains the visa.dw6 file. Because nothing changed other than adding the file, I kept it at the same version and replaced the trial version on the website with the new one. You can download it here: https://transera.com/downloads

Before installing it, uninstall the trial version already on your machine and delete the HTBasic 2021 Trial folder to ensure the copied VISA file is gone. Then run the install and give it a try. Hopefully that will resolve it for you.

Thanks,

Pat

[Matt Martin]

Pat,

Thanks – this one loads.
Windows must have been blocking files foreign to the installation.

Our code seems to need a few tweaks to terminators, etc to run correctly with the VISA driver but it looks promising !

Thanks,
Matt

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

That’s great news! Let us know if you run into any additional problems.

Thanks,

Pat

[Matt Martin]

Actually I do have one more question..
When I use an output command to a device thru the VISA device, the output strings appear to be broken up.

Specifically, a command like OUTPUT @instr USING “””MYSTR””,2Z,2Z”;2,3 now sends
MYSTR
then 02
then 03
instead of one continuous string.

Is this a configuration I can change ? It confuses our instruments.
Workaround would be building each full string first and then outputting. (significant re-write)

Thanks,
Matt

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