21 Apr
2015
21 Apr
'15
5:20 p.m.
The interface is an ISA bus card that is a custom design. ISA slots in
computers are hard to come by these days. Luckily for me I ran into a
Gateway in a thrift store that did.
I have some of the diagnostic routines and they run under Windows 98 and
'talk' to the spectrometer via the interface card. I suppose it is
using the same low level driver.
In the published literature of that era (1990's) I found a couple of
references that said they used Visual Basic to get data for experiments.
On 4/21/2015 12:45 PM, Dave G4UGM wrote:
The phrase "standard Windows 16bit DLLs"
means Windows 3.1 DLLs. Such DLL's no longer work in a modern windows. If they
directly access the hardware then they will not work on any NT based windows such as
Windows/2000, Windows/XP, Vista, or 7, 8 or 9. Nor will they work on any 64-Bit windows
full stop. 64-Bit windows does not support 16-bit code. If you have a Windows/95, 98 or ME
environment then the code may work.
There is information here:-
http://www.tsreader.com/docs/eng-ole.html
on how to call 16-bit DLL's from VB4.
How does the hardware physically interface? Is it a serial or parallel card, or special
hardware.
Dave
G4UGM
-----Original Message-----
From: cctech [mailto:cctech-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Douglas
Taylor
Sent: 21 April 2015 15:19
To: General at classiccmp.org; Discussion at classiccmp.org:On-Topic Posts
Subject: Visual Basic Question
I have a software driver for an old scientific instrument that is described in a
brief manual this way:
"The acquisition driver is a tool that allows developers to write their own
Windows based programs that can acquire data from any Michelson series
spectrometer. The programs can be developed with any programming
environment that supports calling standard Windows 16bit DLLs. Examples of
such environments are Visual Basic and Visual C++ from Microsoft ( up to
version 1.5 ), Delphi and C++ from Borland, Labview from National
instruments. This document assumes that the reader is familiar with all the
concepts surrounding DLLs and Windows programming. It is a reference
guide that explains the parameters of the functions that make up the
Bomem acquisition driver and how they are used to acquire data."
I recently purchased Visual Basic 4.0 Standard Edition, but the first pages of
the reference indicate that it is a 32 bit only version.
Which version of Visual Basic will allow me to call this driver?