Chapter 3 Developing Your NI-488.2 Application
NI-488.2 User Manual for Windows 3-8 www.natinst.com
Programming Models

Applications That Communicate with a Single GPIB Device

This section describes items you should include in your application and
provides general program steps with an NI-488.2 example.

Items to Include

Include the following items in your application:
•Header files—In a C application, include the header files windows.h
and decl-32.h. The standard Windows header file, windows.h,
contains definitions used by decl-32.h, and decl-32.h contains
prototypes for the NI-488.2 calls and constants that you can use in your
application.
•Error checking—Check for errors after each NI-488.2 call.
•Error handling—Declare and define a function to handle NI-488.2
errors. This function takes the device offline and closes the application.
If the function is declared as:
void gpiberr (char * msg); /*function prototype*/
Then, your application invokes it as follows:
if (ibsta & ERR) {
gpiberr("NI-488.2 error");
}

General Program Steps and Examples

The following steps show you how to use the device-level traditional
NI-488.2 calls in your application. The NI-488.2 software includes the
source code for an example written in C, devquery.c, and the source code
for the example written to use direct entry to access gpib-32.dll,
dlldevquery.c. The NI-488.2 software also includes a sample program
written in Visual Basic, devquery.frm.

Initialization

Step 1. Open a Device
Use ibdev to open a device handle. The ibdev function requires the
following parameters:
•Connect board index (typically 0, for GPIB0).
•Primary address for the GPIB instrument (refer to the instrument user
manual or use the FindLstn function to dynamically determine the