Agilent Technologies 669xA, 665xA, 664xA Prerequisites for Using this Guide, Accessing Online Help

Prerequisites for Using this Guide

This organization of this guide assumes that you know or can learn the following information:

1.How to program in your controller language (Agilent BASIC, QUICKBASIC, C, etc.).

2.The basics of the GPIB (IEEE 488).

3.How to program I/O statements for an IEEE 488 bus instrument. From a programming aspect, the power supply is simply a bus instrument.

4.How to format ASCII statements within you I/O programming statements. SCPI commands are nothing more than ASCII data strings incorporated within those I/O statements.

5.The basic operating principles of the power supply as explained in “Chapter 5 – Front Panel Operation” of the Operating Guide.

6.How to set the GPIB address of the power supply. This cannot be done remotely, but only from the supply’s front panel (see System Considerations in “Chapter 2 – Remote Programming”).

VXIplug&play Power Product Instrument Drivers

VXIplug&play instrument drivers for Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT are now available on the Web at http://www.agilent.com/find/drivers. These instrument drivers provide a high-level programming interface to your Agilent Technologies instrument. VXIplug&play instrument drivers are an alternative to programming your instrument with SCPI command strings. Because the instrument driver's function calls work together on top of the VISA I/O library, a single instrument driver can be used with multiple application environments.

Supported Applications		System Requirements
a	Agilent VEE	The VXIplug&play Power Products instrument driver
a	Microsoft Visual BASIC	complies with the following:
a	Microsoft Visual C/C++	a	Microsoft Windows 95
a	Borland C/C++	a	Microsoft Windows NT
a	National Instruments LabVIEW	a	HP VISA revision F.01.02
a	National Instruments LabWindows/CVI	a	National Instruments VISA 1.1

Downloading and Installing the Driver

NOTE: Before installing the VXIplug&play instrument driver, make sure that you have one of the supported applications installed and running on your computer.

1.Access Agilent Technologies' Web site at http://www.agilent.com/find/drivers.

2.Select the instrument for which you need the driver.

3.Click on the driver, either Windows 95 or Windows NT, and download the executable file to your pc.

4.Locate the file that you downloaded from the Web. From the Start menu select Run <path>:\agxxxx.exe - where <path> is the directory path where the file is located, and agxxxx is the instrument driver that you downloaded .

5.Follow the directions on the screen to install the software. The default installation selections will work in most cases. The readme.txt file contains product updates or corrections that are not documented in the on-line help. If you decide to install this file, use any text editor to open and read it.

6.To use the VXIplug&play instrument driver, follow the directions in the VXIplug&play online help under “Introduction to Programming”.

Accessing Online Help

A comprehensive online programming reference is provided with the driver. It describes how to get started using the instrument driver with Agilent VEE, LabVIEW, and LabWindows. It includes complete descriptions of all function calls as well as example programs in C/C++ and Visual BASIC.

aTo access the online help when you have chosen the default Vxipnp start folder, click on the Start button and select Programs Vxipnp Agxxxx Help (32-bit).

- where agxxxx is the instrument driver.

8 Introduction