Using a Measurement Computing I/O Card with SuperLab
Last Revision: March 21, 2001

The information in this article applies to:

• Users wishing to install and use an I/O card manufactured by Measurement Computing, Corp. (formerly Computer Boards, Inc.) such as the CIO-DIO24 or the PCI-DIO24.

Summary

Installing and using a Measurement Computing I/O card consists of the following steps:

• Installing the card in your computer

• Installing the software provided by Measurement Computing

• Installing the Support Pack provided by Cedrus

• Connecting your equipment to the card

Installing the Hardware

The physical installation of the card is not covered in this tech note. Generally, you need to open your PC and insert the card into an ISA slot if it's a CIO-DIO24, or a PCI slot if it's a PCI-DIO24. Beware not to zap the board with static electricity!

Please refer to your I/O card's manual for information regarding this first step.

Installing the Software

If purchased from Cedrus along with the Support Pack, your I/O card comes with a CD-ROM and a floppy disk. The first one is supplied by Measurement Computing, the other by Cedrus.

Note: These instructions assume that the SuperLab program is already installed.

Step 1:  The first step is to install the software that comes on the Measurement Computing CD-ROM. This will copy to your computer, among other things, two important pieces of software. The first one is a DLL (dynamic link library) that SuperLab uses to access the card, and the second one is a test program called InstaCal.

Step 2:  You need to run InstaCal to verify that your I/O card is installed correctly and working. Your I/O card should be board number 0.

If InstaCal shows board number 0 to be a "DEMO-BOARD", then:

• Right-click with the mouse on "DEMO-BOARD". A menu appears. Select "Remove Board".

This board must be removed before you add the new one.

• From the Install menu, select "Add Board". A dialog appears.

• From this dialog, select your board model, e.g. CIO-DIO24 or PCI-DIO24. Click on OK.

At this point, InstaCal should show "Bd# 0 - CIO-DIO24" or "Bd# 0 - PCI-DIO24 (pci slot ...)". If you cannot get InstaCal to "see" your board, please refer to the Measurement Computing documentation or their web site for assistance.

Step 3:  The last step in the software installation is to install the Measurement Computing Support Pack provided by Cedrus. Insert the Cedrus diskette into the floppy disk drive and run the setup program on it (there should be only one). Follow the on-screen instructions.

If all goes well, you should now see two new features when you run SuperLab. The first one is a new input module named "Measurement Computing Card". You can see it when you go to the Experiment menu and chose "Input From...".

The second new feature is a new "Digital Output" event type. You can see it when you create a new event (or edit an existing one), click on the Event tab, and then click on the Event Type menu.

Connecting Your Equipment to the I/O Card

Both I/O card models, the CIO-DIO24 and PCI-DIO24, provide 24 digital input and output lines. These are divided into 3 groups called "ports" and named Port A, Port B, and Port C.

SuperLab Pro uses Port A for input and Port B for output. Port C remains currently unused. For input, lines must be "pulled low," that is, connected to ground by a resistor. The diagram on the right illustrates how this is done for line A0 (pin 37). The same diagram applies for lines A1 to A7. The resistor's value may range from 2.2 kiloohm to 5 kiloohm.

Cedrus highly recommends that all lines on Port A are pulled low even if you will not be using all 8 input lines. Better yet: connect unused lines directly to ground.

Troubleshooting the Installation

If, after installing the I/O card, you cannot get a signal out of it, try the following troubleshooting steps:

1.  Run InstaCal and double-check that your I/O card is board number 0. If it is not, then go back to Step 2 of "Installing the Software" paragraph above.

2.  If InstaCal shows that your board to be number 0, run the InstaCal tests. See the Measurement Computing documentation. 

If your card passes the InstaCal tests, this means that the Measurement Computing software is "seeing" the I/O card but SuperLab is not. Try the following:

3.  From the Start button, select Search (or Find on Windows 95 or 98). From the Search submenu, select "Files or Computers...". Search all your hard drives for a file named CBW.DLL. If you find one, delete it -- this is a remnant of an older 16-bit (for Windows 3.1) installation.

4.  Search all your hard drives again for a file named CBW32.DLL. If you find more than one, delete all the copies except the one in your "Computer Boards" folder.

5.  Similarly, search all your hard drives for a file named CB.CFG. If you find more than one, delete all the copies except the one in your "Computer Boards" folder.

If you find more than one Computer Boards folder, this is probably the result of multiple installations. In this case, it is best if you uninstall everything and re-install a fresh copy from scratch.