VISA 0xBFFF0011 (insufficient location information or resource not present) with ICS Electronics 8065 LAN to GPIB gateway

[BuckleyPhysics]

Hi, this problem has me pretty much completely stumped. Any ideas or guidance is very welcome.

My hardware:

ICS Electronics model 8065 LAN GPIB gateway (pdf spec sheet)

connected to:

ICS Electronics model 4863B GPIB/IEEE488 Bus interface (pdf spec sheet).

My software version:

Labview Version 2012 SP1

Measurement & Automation Explorer Version 5.4.0f0

NI-VISA Version 5.3

Problem description:

When I try to connect to the VXI-11 interface of the 8065 from NI-MAX, I get the error:

Error opening resource: 
TCPIP0::172.21.2.160::gpib0,4::INSTR

VISA:  (Hex 0xBFFF0011) Insufficient location information or the device or resource is not present in the system.

 Steps to reproduce:

1.  In  NI Measurement & Automation Explorer -> Devices and Interfaces -> Network Devices, choose "Add Network Device", "VISA TCP/IP Resource"
2.  Choose "Manual Entry of LAN Instrument"
3.  Enter IP Address (172.21.2.160) and LAN Device name (gpib0,4)
4.  Press "Validate" and immediately get the above error.

Troubleshooting steps taken

Pinging the instrument:

Successful

Connecting to instrument with telnet to port 111

Successful

Connecting with 3rd party VXI-11 utility

Using "ICS Electronics VXI-11 Keyboard" Can successfully connect and run "*idn?"

Connecting from another computer:

From a different computer, running LabVIEW 6.1 with MAX v3.1.1, if I follow the exact same steps as above, I can connect and talk to the device (e.g. write "*IDN?\n" to the device and read response with the VISA Basic I/O utility).

Running wireshark

I can't see any packets sent or received to the device's IP address using wireshark, which I find odd.

[Kurt-P]

Hey TobinJones,

There are a few situations that may be going on here. First you should try running Measurement and Automation Explorer as an administrator. Try communicating with the device. If you are not picking up anything on WireShark, you there might be firewall or anti-virus getting in the way. There is also the chance that another companies version of VISA is interfering with NIs (especially if there is 64 bit support). You can try uninstalling the other companies VISA (if they have one) to see if that help.  What operating system is on the other computer? There were some big differences between Windows 7 and XP, the largest of which was how they changed administrator privileges. Can you connect the device to the computer by itself either through a PCI GPIB card or by an USB-GPIB-HS? What are the results of that? Lastly, there might be a passport you need to enable. This KnowledgeBase goes over how to do that for Agilient device: 

http://digital.ni.com/public.nsf/websearch/3B3626D9C1F999218625694200791AD7?OpenDocument

Let me know if any of that helps,

-KP

[dk_81]

This is likely a known open problem affecting VXI-11 based lan/gpib gateways.  See bug report #375426.  It also affects gateways from my company, TAMS L488 and 3020.  I've seen the same error message with both Agilent E5810A gateways, as well as the other two.  Only known solution at this time is to roll back to something earlier than NI-VISA 5.2.

Dave Kinsell

TAMS Inc.

[rreis]

Thanks for all of the posts on this topic.  I'm seeing the same error with a Yokogawa DL6054 Oscilloscope with a VXI-11 LAN interface.  I'm experiencing the problem intermittently though.  Most of the time it works fine but sometimes we try to communicate with it and it throws that error.  I haven't been able to determine what the conditions are that cause it.  Is there any timeline on fixing that bug?

[Dennis_Knutson]

That bug was specific to lan to gpib converters and was reported as fixed in VISA 5.4. What version are you using? It sounds like you have a different problem though. Is the instrument on a dedicated connection or not?

[rreis]

I'm using NI-Visa 5.4.  It's on a dedicated connection through a network switch.  It happens quite infrequently and I can't even reproduce it reliably.  We use it in a production environment and during the test where it occurs intermittently, the scope has been idle for a couple of hours.  So, maybe it's dropping the connection for some reason during the idle time.  Perhaps a workaround might be to ping it once in a while.

[dk_81]

It wasn't actually fixed in 5.4, it was 5.4.1 that got the fix.  If you're not using that, certainly worth a shot.

The bug was reported on lan-gpib gateways that used the VXI-11 protocol, so it could easily be related.

In my experience though, it wasn't intermittent, it simply didn't work.  Try the newer code to see if it helps.

-Dave