HPIB to HPIL adapter

From: allisonp_at_world.std.com <(allisonp_at_world.std.com)>
Date: Wed Apr 12 07:43:02 2000

> > Forget about Labview and its drivers...
> >
> That's my inclination as well. It's just that numerous local companies use
> it in their testing and are willing to pay almost excessive (if it's what
> they pay me it's not excessive) rates for people to write scripts and
> drivers for Labview to drive their instruments. Many of them are already
> supported, but the new drivers are worth something.

Forget labview also. We don't use it. We do however use the base drives
that come with the gpib cards, they usually have pascal, C, Qbasic and a
few other versions in the set. They only get you on to and off of the bus
and what you say to the address instrument and it's replies have to be
known and part of the higher level code. It's pretty trivial but does
require knowing the controlled instrument "language".

> Oh, yes. The PC will do that, but at some point in the future, I might want
> to make up a little controller board with the necessary firmware to make it
> able to initialize and poll, etc, and then do some specific task. I still
> have a couple of those 9114's from T.I.

NEC 7210 is a good part if you can find them.

> Somehow I think folks will be more interested in having this done via
> Labview or some similar suite. I'm quite sure there are GPIB card vendors
> for the PC beyond N.I. Surely there's something besides LabView that's just

Several, not much differene in them. Not cheap either!

> as useful. If not, it will be necessary for me to look at whatever I can
> find to enable me to prepare drivers for various instruments or, the
> "generic" instrument, by using stubs for the appropriate device-specific

You need a gpib driver (like driving a NIC) and then a high level driver
that will be instrument specific. We have about different ones to
accomodate each one of the different DMMs we use! For example the
Keithley 199 uses one format, k2000 a different one and the 2001 either!
then the new HP we got is of course different... grrr!

Allison
Received on Wed Apr 12 2000 - 07:43:02 BST