Table of Contents
Introduction
IEQ11 is IEEE488/GPIB adapter for PDP and VAX. To configure it 2 steps must be applied - compilation and loading of NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver and confuguring CHARON.
NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver
CHARON supports NI PCI/PCIe/GPIB boards in pass-through mode using a specific driver that can be built from sources located in "/opt/charon/drivers/ni_pci_gpib_ppt" directory. Upon loading the driver (".ko" loadable module) into OS kernel at runtime it creates "/dev/gpib<i>" device for each NI PCI/PCIe/GPIB board it finds.
There is no need to install device drivers from National Instruments
Building NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver
To build NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver do the following:
| Step | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Make sure that the required building tools and include files are installed. If they are absent install them:
The kernel version must match the version of the installed kernel-headers (i.e. this packages must have same versions. It can be verified via Check that the "kernel" and the "kernel-headers" have the same version, and ensure that system is booted from this kernel version (not from some older one and etc) with " | |
| 2 | Open xterm and change the default directory to "
| |
| 3 | Issue "make clean; make" commands to build kernel object:
| |
| 4 | Check that there are no compilation errors and the file "ni_pci_gpib_ppt.ko" has been built |
It is prohibited to use a module built on a certain version of kernel on another one.Installation of NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver
To install NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver do the following:
| Step | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Load "
| |
| 2 | Issue "dmesg" command and check that no error appeared during the driver loading, also check that the driver has found all GPIB devices:
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Adding NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver to Linux startup
To add NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver to Linux startup do the following:
| Step | Description | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Disable auto-loading of device drivers from National Instruments on boot (if available). Use the black list file "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf" to do that. | |
| 2 | Copy the GPIB kernel module to the location of Linux kernel modules, for example:
| |
| 3 | Enable auto load of the module:
| |
| 4 | Regenerate new "initramfs" image with "mkinitrd":
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Configuring CHARON
Once NI-PCI/GPIB PCI PassThrough device driver is compiled and loaded configure CHARON in the following way:
VAX configuration
load IEQ11 IEA set IEA host_bus_location[0] = "/dev/gpib<N>" set IEA host_bus_location[1] = "/dev/gpib<M>" |
Example:
load IEQ11 IEA set IEA host_bus_location[0] = "/dev/gpib0" set IEA host_bus_location[1] = "/dev/gpib1" |
PDP11 configuration
load IEQ11 IEA vector = 0270 priority = 6 set IEA host_bus_location[0] = "/dev/gpib<N>" |
Example:
load IEQ11 IEA vector = 0270 priority = 6 set IEA host_bus_location[0] = "/dev/gpib0" set IEA host_bus_location[1] = "/dev/gpib1" |