[PatB]

Hi Peter,

That is great to hear this will work for you.

Concerning which versions will allow double clicking on .prg file to launch, I don’t recall exactly what version it was fixed in, but certainly one of the 10.xx versions. I highly recommend updating to HTBasic 2021 as double clicking on the .prg file will certainly work and it contains many improvements from the HTBasic 10 versions.

Thanks,

Pat

[PatB]

Hi Peter,

You can use the COMMAND$ keyword to return the command line used to start the program. If you double click on a .prg file to launch HTBasic, it will return the path and name of the HTBwin.exe run followed by the path to the double clicked program file. This should give you what you need.

As a side note though, any driver that is found at the same location as the HTBwin.exe file, will be found when trying to load it, no matter what the MSI is set to.

Hope this helps,

Pat

[PatB]

Hi Uwe,

In the service dialog (after pressing service), have you tried to click on the “Start” button? If so, does the service start? Depending on the state of the service, you may need to “Register” the service first, and then click on “Start”. You will not be able to load the GPIO600 driver until the service is running.

If after trying the above you are still unable to get it to work, please let us know what version of Windows you are running this on.

Thanks,

Pat

[PatB]

Hi Tony,

Thanks for reporting this. I was able to reproduce and will log a ticket to get it fixed.

Thanks,

Pat

[PatB]

Glad the Visa driver worked better for you. Yes, the implementation of the Visa driver is geared more towards loading each device separately as you mentioned. Depending on what you use for the Visa address, I believe you could get away with just loading the interface and then continuing to use the secondary address. I would like to try this myself though to ensure that it is supported. I will give it a try when I get a chance and let you know.

[PatB]

Hi Tony,

I assume you are using the GPIBNI driver? The way that driver works, once it is loaded it starts an interrupt thread that regularly checks in every 100 milliseconds. When it check’s in, it calls iblines, ibwait, and Threadibsta. Unloading the driver will stop the interrupt thread, but then will also stop communication from HTBasic, so is probably not the work around you are looking for.

If this is causing problems by filling up your logs, you could try using the new VISA driver that is included in our latest release of HTBasic. The new VISA driver does things more natively and shouldn’t have the same problems.

Thanks,

Pat

[PatB]

Good Question. Try adding an END to the end of the OUTPUT statement and let me know if that makes a difference. I am not certain it will, but it’s worth a shot. I don’t have time today, but can look deeper if it doesn’t work to see if there is an easy work around without requiring much rewrite.

Thanks,

Pat

[PatB]

Hi Matt,

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

Thanks,

Pat

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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,

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

[PatB]

Thanks Tony for the additional information.

Could you provide more details around when communication seems to stop? For example:

1. How long is “A short period of time”? Minutes, Hours, Days?
2. When it stops working, is there an error displayed in the currently running program (If so, what error), and the program execution is stopped? Or is it always between runs that it goes from working, to not working?
3. To expand on #2, is it always after re-launching HTBasic that it appears to stop working, or is it working and then subsequently not working, in the same instance of HTBasic?
4. When you say unloading the driver and then re-loading it does not solve the issue, are you unloading it from inside Device Setup? When you re-load the driver, does it show it loaded correctly, but still doesn’t communicate? or does it simply fail to load?
5. Have you tried using the HTBasic reset utility after communication stops, to clear the registry and then re-add and re-load the driver? Does that resolve the issue, without requiring a reboot?

What I suspect is happening is that an error is occurring that is causing the current Visa Session not to work, but that the session is also not getting closed correctly, blocking new sessions from getting opened. What I don’t understand, is that unloading the driver should closes the session, so why does that not resolve your issue. Answers to my above questions will hopefully help me to narrow down what is happening so that we can propose a work around, or find a solution.

Thanks,

Pat

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