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Introduction
How the NI-488.2M Software Works with Windows NT
The main components of the NI-488.2M software are a dynamic link library that runs in
user mode and a layered NT device driver that runs in kernel mode. The layered NT
device driver consists of three drivers: a device class driver that handles device-level
calls, a board class driver that handles board-level calls, and a GPIB port driver that uses
the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to communicate with the GPIB hardware. The
top two layers of the layered NT device driver are accessed from user mode by
gpib-32.dll, a 32-bit Windows NT dynamic link library.
GPIB applications access the NI-488.2M software through gpib-32.dll as follows:
•
A 32-bit Windows application can either link with the language interface
(gpib -32.obj) or directly access the functions exported by the DLL.
•
If you already have an existing 16-bit Windows applications, use the 16-bit DLL
(gpib.dll ) to access the GPIB virtual device driver (gpib-vdd.dll).
•
If you have an existing DOS application, use the DOS device driver
(gpib -nt.com) to access the GPIB virtual device driver.
Figure 1-4 shows how you can use the NI-488.2M software with Windows NT and your
GPIB application programs.
NI-488.2M UM for Windows NT
1-8
© National Instruments Corp.
Chapter 1
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