Once the software installed, the following tools and software components are available:
PXI/PCI Explorer applet – use to configure the PXI chassis, controllers and devices. This is required for accurate identification of your PXI instruments later on when installed in your system. The applet configuration is saved to PXISYS.ini and PXIeSYS.ini that are used by Marvin Test Solutions instruments, the VISA provider and VISA based instruments drivers. In addition, the applet can be used to assign chassis numbers, Legacy Slot numbers and instruments alias names.
VISA is a standard maintained by the VXI Plug & Play System Alliance and the PXI Systems Alliance organizations (http://www.ivifoundation.org/, http://www.pxisa.org/). VISA provides a standard way for instrument manufacturers and users to write and use instruments drivers. The VISA resource managers such as National Instruments Measurement & Automation (NI-MAX) can display and configure instruments and their address (similar to Marvin Test Solutions' PXI/PCI Explorer).
GXPDO Panel – use to configure, control and display the board settings.
GXPDO driver - A DLL based function library (32/64-bit versions of GXPDO/DLL, located in the Windows System folders) used to program and control the board. The driver uses Marvin Test Solutions' HW driver or VISA supplied by third party vendor to access and control the GXPDO board.
Programming files and examples – interface files and libraries for various programming tools, see later in this chapter for a complete list of files, programming languages and development tools supported by the driver.
Documentation – On-Line help (compiled HTML help file - chm file) and User’s Guide (Adobe Acrobat - pdf).