My serial ports do not show up in MAX

[HuMfR33]

Hi Guys

I hope someone on this forum can help me. I am trying to connect a Tektronix TDS 3012 Oscilloscope to a Windows XP PC using the serial port (COM1) so that I can automate an experiment. I have found the National Instruments certified driver for the oscilloscope but the Serial Ports do not show up in MAX under Devices and Interfaces at all. I have checked in the device manager and it says the port is working correctly and the drivers for it are up to date. I have further tested this by running the Basic Serial Read Write VI example that comes with LabView and my device responds to simple commands. I understand that if the ports don't appear in MAX, the NI drivers won't work. Any help as to how I can fix this problem will be greatly appreciated.

[Dennis_Knutson]

Why did you post here instead of the Instrument Control board? In any case, if you were able to select a com port in Basic Serial Write and Read, then the com port is available in MAX. When you use the same resource name with the example from the driver, what error code do you get?

[HuMfR33]

Apologies. Just a stupid mistake. The error codes I obtained were:

241:  Hardware missing;
0:  No events to report - queue empty

[Dennis_Knutson]

That is an instrument specific error. You can refer to the manual for an explanation. You have not provide much information here such as what functions in the driver you are using.

[HuMfR33]

I was using the Tektronix TDS 3000 Series Single Channel Waveform Aquire.vi from the driver to try and obtain a waveform from the oscilloscope. I made sure all of the Channel Configuration, Horizontal Configuration and Triggering settings were correct and upon running the VI I obtained the error. I tried looking for help on the Tektronix support forums and while someone had the same problem as me, the responses weren't very helpful. The driver was blamed as the issue.

[Dennis_Knutson]

You are going to have to first find out which function is generating the error. Do that by placing probes on the error wires between functions. I've used the instrument and example and I've not seen that error, though I have never used a serial connection.