README.TXT for Agilent E8402/E8404 Mainframe with Enhanced Monitor Plug&Play Driver Contents: 1 Introduction 1.1 Viewing the Help on Windows 10 Systems 2 VISA Specific Information 2.1 Instrument Addresses 2.2 Executing the Soft Front Panel without VISA 3 Using the E8404 Driver in Application Development Environments 3.1 C/C++ 3.2 Microsoft Visual Basic 4.0 Known Defects 5.0 Obtaining New and Updated VXIplug&play Drivers 6.0 Revision History - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Introduction The help file included with the Agilent E8404 VXIplug&play driver contains instrument and programming information. This readme file contains additional information for the VXIplug&play programmer. 1.1 Viewing the Help on Windows 10 Systems The old WinHelp does not run by default on Windows 10 Systems...at least when this driver was updated. A solution was found in the third message on this web site: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-other_settings/winhlp32exe-windows-10/5971eda3-3a07-4156-af2a-926c65eb5a0c The following steps came from the above web site and allow older Winhlp to run on Windows 10 systems: To enable Winhlp to work in Windows 10, follow these simple instructions. a) Download the updated Winhlp32 installation files, which are compressed into a zip file (winhlp32-windows-7-10-x86-64.zip) from the following link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_tSrOg4FLp1T0dyTEppaW9SYm8 b) Extract the contents of of the file you just downloaded (winhlp32-windows-7-10-x86-64.zip) c) Run the Install.cmd as Administrator by right-clicking on Install.cmd, then select Run as Administrator. d) Acknowledge any privilege warnings and allow Install.cmd to proceed. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. VISA Specific Information The following topics refer to instances when the driver is used with different versions of VISA. 2.1 Instrument Addresses When using Agilent VXIplug&play instrument drivers, instrument addresses must be all uppercase letters. Implementation of the addressing scheme is vendor specific and some vendors support mixed cases. However, for maximum portability, the instrument address should use uppercase characters only. For example: use "VXI0::56::INSTR" instead of "vxi0::56::instr" 2.2 Executing the Soft Front Panel without VISA The VISA dynamic link library provides a communication library between your program and the instrument. The SFP may be executed without VISA or without the HPE8404_32.dll present. It will do a partial emulation of the hardware for demo purposes. - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Using the Agilent E8404 Driver in Application Development Environments This section offers suggestions on using the hpe8404_32.dll within various application development environments. 3.1 C/C++ Refer to your C/C++ manuals for information on linking and calling .DLLs. Rebuilding the driver requires header files located in the ~\winnt\hpe1460 or ~\win95\hpe8404 directory. The ~ refers to the directory in the VXIPNPPATH variable. By default this is set to C:\VXIPNP on Agilent I/O Libraries revisions prior to J.01.00; or to C:\Program Files\VISA on revisions J.01.00 or later. Rebuilding the driver DLL should be done in a different directory than the one the driver was installed in order to differentiate the changes. 3.2 Microsoft Visual Basic Refer to the Microsoft Visual BASIC manual for information on calling DLLs. The BASIC include file is hpe8404.bas, which is contained in the directory ~\winnt\include or ~\win95\include. The ~ refers to the directory in the VXIPNPPATH variable. By default this is set to C:\VXIPNP on Agilent I/O Libraries revisions prior to J.01.00; or to C:\Program Files\VISA on revisions J.01.00 or later. - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.0 Known Defects - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.0 Obtaining New and Updated VXIplug&play Drivers The latest copy of this instrument driver and other Agilent instrument drivers are available at the Agilent Technologies customer WWW site: http://www.agilent.com/find/inst_drivers If you do not have Internet access, the drivers can be obtained by contacting your country support organization. In the US, the phone number is 800-452-4844. A list of contact information for other countries is available on the Agilent website: http://www.agilent.com/find/assist - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6.0 Revision History A.01.00 June 1998 Initial Release hpe8404_32.dll A.01.00 hps8404.exe A.01.00 A.01.01 August 1999 Updated this readme.txt file hpe8404_32.dll A.01.00 hps8404.exe A.01.00 A.01.02 October 2002 Agilent rebranding hpe8404_error_message aborted if called with vi=NULL hpe8404_32.dll A.01.01 hps8404.exe A.01.01 A.01.03 September 2019 Keysight rebranding, installer modified to support Windows10 hpe8404_32.dll A.01.01 hps8404.exe A.01.02