© National Instruments Corp. 8-1 NI-488.2 User Manual for Windows
Chapter 8wibconf–Windows Interface BusConfiguration Utility
This chapter contains a description of wibconf, the software configuration program you
can use to configure the NI-488.2 software for Windows.
Overview
The wibconf utility is a screen-oriented, interactive program you can use to view or
modify the configuration parameters of your GPIB interface boards and the GPIB devices
connected to them. Usually, you use wibconf to modify the hardware settings of your
GPIB interface boards.
The wibconf utility can read in and display configuration parameters for the NI-488.2
driver file on disk. You can then save the changes back to the disk file. wibconf also
has a supplementary batch mode which can be used for configuring in a non-interactive
fashion.
Instead of using wibconf, you can configure your driver programmatically by using the
ibconfig function to alter any of the board or device characteristics while your
program is running. If you use dynamic configuration, you do not need to run wibconf
before you start your application. Also, you can run your application on any computer
with the appropriate NI-488.2 software regardless of its configuration because the
application configures the driver as necessary. Programmatic configuration is the
preferred method of GPIB application development.

Starting wibconf

The simplest way to use wibconf is to double-click on the wibconf icon in your
GPIB group in the Windows Program Manager. Windows pops up a dialog box
labeled Parameters.
By default, wibconf looks for the NI-488.2 software configuration file, gpib.ini , in
the c:\windows directory. If you installed Windows in a directory other than
c:\windows, specify the full path to the gpib.ini file in the Parameters box. For
example, if you installed Windows in the directory d:\win3, type
d:\win3\gpib.ini in the Parameters dialog box.
If you installed Windows in the default directory, simply press <Return>.