GPIB first time for me

[Lacver]

Hello All,

I want to anticipate my gratitude to those who reply.   I have a thermatron chamber that I need to communicate with.  I installed the GPIB card and ran MAX.  I was able to see the GPIB0 with an address 8.  Unfortunately when I run "communicate with my system" and I send the *IDN?, it gives error:
iberr = EAB0 indicates that an I/O operation has been canceled.

Also I wrote the GPIB simple instruction which I attached below and I don't see much of a response except it hangs, so I assume that I am not reading the buffer properly.

I have one more question, I read about VISA.  Should I use VISA instead of GPIB commands?

Thanks,

Ronnie

PS---I can't figure out how to include a jpg file in here.

[MichaelChaney]

Hi Ronnie,

It's possible that your instrument doesn't respond to *IDN?, especially if it is an older 488.1 device.  Try sending a command that you know the device should respond to, maybe a command that will change the display on the device.  This will verify that the instrument is receiving commands correctly.  Make sure you can verify communication in MAX first before trying it in code.

To answer your second question, if you feel that at some point you may need to port your code to another interface, such as serial, USB, or Ethernet, then you should definitely look into using VISA.  If you are only going to use GPIB, then you might want to use 488.2.  Many device drivers are written with 488.2.

p.s.  you can add attachments by clicking Browse in the Attachment field below the Message Body field when writing a post.