Chapter 6 Interactive Control Utility
© National Instruments Corporation 6-5 NI-488.2 User Manual for Windows
Special symbols—Some instruments require special termination or
end-of-string (EOS) characters that indicate to the device that a
transmission has ended. The two most common EOS characters are \r and
\n. \r represents a carriage return character and \n represents a linefeed
character. You can use these special characters to insert the carriage return
and linefeed characters into a string, as in "*IDN?\r\n".

Address Syntax

Some of the NI-488.2 calls have an address or address list parameter. An
address is a 16-bit representation of the GPIB device address. The primary
address is stored in the low byte and the secondary address, if any, is stored
in the high byte. For example, a device at primary address 6 and secondary
address 0x67 has an address of 0x6706. A NULL address is represented as
0xffff. An address list is represented by a comma-separated list of
addresses, such as 1,2,3.
Interactive Control Commands
Tables 6-1 and6-2 summarize the syntax of the traditional NI-488.2 calls
in the Interactive Control utility. Table 6-3 summarizes the syntax of the
multi-device NI-488.2 calls in the Interactive Control utility. Table 6-4
summarizes the auxiliary functions that you can use in the Interactive
Control utility. For more information about the function parameters, use the
online help, available by typing in help. If you enter only the function
name, the Interactive Control utility prompts you for parameters.
Table 6-1. Syntax for Device-Level Traditional NI-488.2 Calls in Interactive Control
Syntax Description
ibask option Return configuration information where option is a mnemonic for a
configuration parameter
ibbna bname Change access interface of device where bname is symbolic name of
newinterface
ibclr Clear specified device
ibconfig option
value Alter configurable parameters where option is mnemonic for a
configuration parameter
ibdev BdIndx pad
sad tmo eot eos Open an unused device; ibdev parameters are BdIndx pad sad tmo
eot eos