How to make Jorway 73A work with Labview

I made the Jorway 73A controller work with Labview 6.1 under Win2K. Three components are needed:

Note that not every combination of the SCSI adapter, ASPI version and operating system works. You should consult Jorway support (support@jorway.com) for more info. Charles Hubbard has been very helpful with installation and debugging advice.

An inexperienced CAMAC user might find the following Labview code useful:

test if you can communicate to the controller --- write to the controller mailbox and read back the written value

test 2249W LeCroy ADC --- this test invokes an internal CAMAC test function and should be run with no external connections to the ADC

Fermilab Instructions (with a word of caution): Two web pages at Fermilab offer instructions and Labview test executables for use with Jorway 73A:

I tried to install the software and test a CAMAC module using instructions in the first link, but I found some of these instructions misleading and the Labview executable did not work (see description of the SCSI ID problem below). Here is a list of Fermilab recommendations that were unnecessary or incorrect:

They ask you to install their version of cvirt(e) libraries but this was not necessary in my case.
They ask you to install what appears to be ASPI libraries but they do not specify if these libraries were modified by Fermilab or this is just the original Adaptec software. The posted ASPI libs are quite old and you won't find them on the Adaptec downloads page. I was unable to communicate to the controller until I installed a more recent version (4.70) from Adaptec.
The posted Labview executable does not let the user set the SCSI bus ID. In my mind, this means that this executable can't work --- unless you are lucky enough to get the SCSI ID assigned to your SCSI device to be coincidentally equal to the SCSI ID hardwired and hidden in the Fermilab code. I described this problem in an email to the Fermilab CAMAC support (camac-support@fnal.gov) but never received an informative answer from them. The older version of the same test executable (2nd Fermilab link above) is free of this oversight but I didn't have enough patience to test it.
Because this is my web page and I can brag about anything, I really do not understand the logic behind providing an executable instead of the actual code . This is especially funny because the first line on the Fermilab page says "The objective of this document is to help you, the LabVIEW user, set up a fully functional CAMAC test station." Well, if I am a Labview user, doesn't it mean that I have Labview installed on my computer and can compile Labview code? Wouldn't I benefit from a piece of code that I could take as a base and modify to my liking?

Ilya Narsky narsky@hep.caltech.edu June 18 2004