Installation and Configuration Section TwoGPIB-PC User Manual 2-18 ©National Instruments Corp.Using Your GPIB-PCNow that your software and hardware are installed, read Section Threefor an introduction to the functions available for the GPIB-PC. Thefunctions are described in the order that you will most likely use them.Pay special attention to Group I, Group II, and Group III.After reading about these functions, practice using them with yourprogrammable instrument or device in an interactive environment usingthe IBIC program described in Section Five. IBIC allows you toprogram your instrument interactively from the computer keyboard ratherthan from an application program. This helps you understand how thedevice and the handler work. It also familiarizes you with statusinformation that is returned by each function and that is also availableto your application program in the form of global variables.While running IBIC, study the descriptions of each function given inSection Four to fully understand the purpose and syntax of eachfunction.Finally, referring to the appropriate language supplement of SectionFour, write your application program. Whenever possible, use IBIC totest the sequence of the GPIB-PC function calls your applicationprogram makes. Trying your function calls from IBIC is especiallyhelpful if your application program responds in an unexpected manner.
