tween Hp-IB,GPIB,GP-IB instrument interfaces.I bought PCI-GPIB card from national and I have problem with GP-IB(messages: It is not compatible with 488.2). Any one has the same problem with Agilent 8166A lightwave multichannel sys. Please help me out soon.Michael,
HP-IB stands for Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus.
HP invented this many years ago. Once it became a standard the name was changed to GPIB for General Purpose Interface BUS. At that time the standard was IEEE 488, this defined the connector, electrical interface and some software commands. The newest version is IEEE-488.2. The only difference is that to be compliant there are more commands that the device must respond to. The GP-IB is the same thing as GPIB.
If you bought the card from NI then they should have supplied you with the 488.w driver software for the GPIB card. If you are using Windows, try starting the MAX and verify the card is installed and working properly. Also in MAX there is a Read/Write utility that will let you test out the interface to the Agil
ent 8166.
You can use the 488.2 card and driver to talk to a 488 device (the 8166) there are however some commands that MAY not respond (most of the 488.2 commands that start with a star like *IDN?).
If you still have problems post again with more specific problems , error messages , etc.
Kevin Kent
