NI VISA vs. Agilent VISA?

[Cat]

Hi all,

I have several boards hanging off a USB hub that I control. When I open up MAX they happily appear at whatever COM port Windows has assigned to them. No problem.

Recently, I've started a diferent project where I am controlling some VXI cards (8491B/1432B). After much flailing about, I finally figured out that to talk the driver that came with the 1432 card (CVI) I had to install Agilent VISA, and during that installation set the default VISA to Agilent VISA. So I did that and it's working fine.

But now I can't talk to the boards on my USB hub. MAX doesn't "see" them.

Are there really different "flavors" of VISA? If so, is it possible that's what's causing my current problem? And if so, how do I get back to NI VISA so I can read the cards hooked up to the USB hub again?

Cat

[LAVA 1.0 Content]

Recently I had similar problem. My application W/ NI-VISA had conflict with Agilent application w/ VISA. I had to uninstall Agilent application and re-install NI-VISA to make my application works. I didn't try to make both lived together. Then I would also be interested to hear those which succeeded with Agilent VISA and NI-VISA.

[Neville D]

I seem to remember something about some dll called "tulip" that allowed NI Visa to talk to Agilent hardware.. this was a long time (10yrs or so) ago..

I think it came from Agilent, but check the NI Knowledgebase about it. I stuck with the NI stuff and was able to get Agilent hardware to work with it.

Neville.

[Rio C.]

QUOTE (pdc @ May 23 2008, 07:56 AM)

Recently I had similar problem. My application W/ NI-VISA had conflict with Agilent application w/ VISA. I had to uninstall Agilent application and re-install NI-VISA to make my application works. I didn't try to make both lived together. Then I would also be interested to hear those which succeeded with Agilent VISA and NI-VISA.

I didn't try to make them live together, but I found that I could re-enable the NI-VISA without reinstalling it. In the \windows\system32 directory there should be a file named visa32.dll. What the Agilent installation does is rename it to something like visa32.dll.old or something. Simply rename the file and you should be up and running . I don't remember if I had to restart the system.

[BrokenArrow]

Just a note that if you use your own code and normal VISA to talk to some Agilent devices, as I do, you have to pay close attention to the com setup. The results are worth it because I've found the Agilent drivers to be clunky.

-Richard

[Cat]

QUOTE (Rio C. @ May 23 2008, 12:32 PM)

I didn't try to make them live together, but I found that I could re-enable the NI-VISA without reinstalling it. In the \windows\system32 directory there should be a file named visa32.dll. What the Agilent installation does is rename it to something like visa32.dll.old or something. Simply rename the file and you should be up and running . I don't remember if I had to restart the system.

I found the NI file (visa32.bak), reloaded it, and everything was happy again. Except for the Agilent boards, of course. But at least I have a workaround now.

Thanks!

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

QUOTE (Neville D @ May 23 2008, 11:18 AM)

I seem to remember something about some dll called "tulip" that allowed NI Visa to talk to Agilent hardware.. this was a long time (10yrs or so) ago..

I think it came from Agilent, but check the NI Knowledgebase about it. I stuck with the NI stuff and was able to get Agilent hardware to work with it.

Neville.

That is the VISA passport for HPIB boards if I'm not mistaken.

Rolf Kalbermatter

[Cat]

I did a search of the the NI site on "tulip VISA" and came up with the following link:

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/allkb/3B3...625694200791AD7

Basically, you can add passports to MAX and it will see different classes of instruments. Of the long list in MAX, the only one that wasn't configured was NiVisaTulip.dll Go figure...

Anyway, I configured it, and now I can run both the USB and Agilent boards at the same time

Thanks for all the help!

Cat