VISA Limitations : Number of Instruments / Type of GPIB Talker

[Just_Amber]

Update: I've given up on the GPIB - ENET / 100. I decided to bust back out the Agilent GPIB talker and see if I could get it to play nice.

I also switched to a star network (photo attached). And I realized that one of my GOM's never showed up because apparently the talker was on the same address (... of all the random numbers to pick, both Agilent and I wanted GPIB0::21::INSTR). I also disabled the dumb Windows USB sleep settings.

At the moment, it appears stable. We'll see if it stands the test of time.

[cstorey]

I think your USB-GPIB (Agilent or NI) should end up plugged into an instrument to be safe.  So plug that entire star into the closest instrument.  

Having 2 instruments with the same GPIB address will result in lots of problems if you expect either instrument to answer commands!

Craig

[Just_Amber]

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@cstorey I think your USB-GPIB (Agilent or NI) should end up plugged into an instrument to be safe.  So plug that entire star into the closest instrument.   

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I wanted to do that, but I don't think it's feasible given the overall footprint of the tester. I don't have the horizontal space to have that lovely star connected directly to an instrument.

We do plan on doing a few mechanical improvements in the future (shelves to separate out the instruments, power cords not just zip tied to the back of the 8020 frame). Perhaps when we bring the system down again for that, we can revisit the mounting of the star.

And, the dumb address conflict! I didn't even think of checking what the address was of my talker because who picks a random number of 21?!

Oh well. It appears to be resolved. I'll be sure to update the thread if I run into any other issues.