Agilent Technologies E6432A User Manual
Agilent E6432A
VXI Microwave Synthesizer
Product Note
High performance microwave
capability in VXI
●
10 MHz to 20 GHz
●
–90 dBm to +20 dBm
●
< 400 µ s frequency switching time
●
1 Hz frequency resolution
●
AM, FM and Pulse modulators
●
VXI plug&play driver
An Introduction to the
Agilent E6432A plug&play Driver
A4032A
POWER
On
Standby
2
Introduction
Today’s VXI instruments communicate
with application programs through
plug&play drivers. In some cases,
these drivers are just one way to
communicate. For the E6432A
microwave synthesizer, its plug&play
driver is the only means of communication with the host controller or its
application programs.
This product note provides an
overview of the communication
process, the range of hardware and
software configurations supported,
and an introduction to the features
of the instrument made available
through the plug&play driver.
The E6432A microwave synthesizer
is a register-based device, rather
than a message-based device. There
are two reasons for this. First, the
E6432A is designed to be a system
source rather than a bench source, so
its user interface and command set
are simple and straightforward. A
register-based design supports this
application. Secondly, the E6432A
employs a fast-switching architecture
in both frequency and amplitude
switching. Switching times of less
than 400 µ s can be achieved in real
customer applications only if the
E6432A processing time is kept to
well under 50 µ s. This can only be
accomplished with a register-based
design.
Most modern automated test systems
use programming environments
and VXI interfaces that support the
plug&play driver architecture. These
systems will easily integrate the
E6432A. For systems using older,
legacy software and VXI interfaces,
support for the E6432A may require
rewriting and/or changing interfaces.
These conditions will be covered in
this note.
Programming Environments
To support the E6432A plug&play
driver, the operating system foundation required by the host controller is
Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0, with
Service Pack 3 or above installed.
Other operating systems, such as
Windows 95/98, UNIX®, or MacOS
are not supported at introduction.
Application programs running on
Windows NT that are compatible
with the E6432A plug&play driver
are:
●
HP VEE 4.0 or higher
●
National Instruments LabView and
LabWindows/CVI versions 4.0
or higher
●
Microsoft Visual Basic
version 5.0 or higher
●
Microsoft Visual C/C++
versions 5.0 or higher
Application programs such as
Agilent Basic for Windows have no
provision for communicating with
plug&play drivers and are therefore
not supported.
VXI Interfacing
There are several interfacing choices
available from host controller to VXI
instruments. Three of these are supported by the E6432A plug&play
driver. They are:
●
VXI Embedded Control (for example, E6234A running Windows NT)
●
National Instruments VXI-MXI-2
●
IEEE-1394 ("Firewire")
(for example, E8491A)
The remaining VXI interfaces
(HP and National Instruments
GPIB-VXI, and National Instruments
MXI-1) are unsupported.
The VXI data specification for the
E6432A is A16/A24, D16/D32. Due to
the large size of frequency registers,
floating point arithmetic is a must.
The interface must be capable of
allocating a large block size of A24
address space (256k). GPIB interfaces are unsupported because they
are fundamentally message-based
interfaces. They are not designed to
communicate with register-based
instruments without special, proprietary software that must be written
and downloaded into their memories
prior to using the plug&play driver.
Microsoft, Windows and Windows NT are U.S. registered
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
UNIX is a registered trademark of the Open Group.
3
National Instruments has two versions of the MXI interface that are
usable in a host controller. The older
VXI-MXI-1 slot 0 controller and its
host card (the AT-MXI interface) do
not operate correctly with E6432A,
due to the AT-MXI interface’s inability to access more than 64k of A24
address space. (Remember, a minimum of 256k is required.) The
newer MXI interface from National
Instruments (the VXI-MXI-2 interface) and its host controller card
(the PCI-MXI interface) work
properly with all of the application
programs listed.
A new serial interface for VXI based
on IEEE-1394 is available from
Agilent (the E8491A). This interface
has nearly the same performance as
MXI-2 in many applications. The
E8491A is supported for use with
the E6432A.
Embedded controllers are available
from both Agilent and National
Instruments. Those controllers that
contain the Intel Pentium® processor
and run Microsoft Windows NT 4.0
are supported for use with the
E6432A.
Initializing the Instrument
After installing the interfaces and
drivers using the procedures given in
the user documentation, it is time to
apply power to the VXI mainframe
and check out the system.
Register-based devices typically
do not contain a processor and
firmware that perform bootstrap and
self-test functions at power on. These
functions are jointly executed by the
host controller and the device. For
the E6432A, the functions are performed when the host controller
issues the ViInitialize function call
through the plug&play driver. When
power is first applied to the E6432A,
the red FAIL LED is lit. This LED
remains lit until a successful
completion of the ViInitialize
function call. Within this function
call are commands that:
●
issue the bootstrap commands
to initialize the onboard assist
processor
●
perform a comprehensive
digital self-test
●
perform a limited analog self-test
●
preset the instrument to
a known state
●
query the error buffers for
any error conditions
●
issue the command to extinguish
the red FAIL LED after a
successful completion
In the programming examples shown
later, we will show that in VEE,
the ViInitialize function call is sent
automatically at the first call to
the instrument. In NI LabView, the
ViInitialize function call must be
sent explicitly as the first call to
the instrument.
The Soft Front Panel
All functions of the E6432A are
represented in the soft front panel
(SFP). The online help system documents the SFP and the plug&play
driver completely. The E6432A SFP
is accessed through the Start menus
of Windows NT. If no VXI interface
is installed on the computer, or the
hardware is not present, the SFP
may be run in Demo Mode as a
learning and demonstration tool.
The online help system will be
fully functional.
Pentium is a U.S. registered trademark of Intel Corporation.
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