mixing older GPIB hardware & software with newer hardware & software

[cerfe]

                                                                                                      Tuesday 3 November 2009

                                                                                                                                   9:15 PM

 

We have a legacy GPIB-controlled spectroscopy system dating from the early 1990s that ran perfectly for many years until it was completely replaced (new computer, new detector controller & new detector) a few years ago. Recently we have tried to resurrect the original system with a different computer (the original PC-clone is no longer working), but so far we have not been successful. Any assistance or suggestions you can make will be deeply appreciated. Details below:

  

Original Hardware

Computer:        PC-clone

OS:                  unknown, but probably a version of MS-DOS (since the computer’s dead there’s no way to know what software was on it).

Interface card:  AT-GPIB/TNT (1993), assy 181830-01, Rev. D

 

New Hardware

Computer:        Dell PC with Pentium processor

OS:                  Windows 98

Interface:          GPIB-USB-A, p/n 184983G-01

 

We switched to the USB interface because the edge connectors in the new computer (PCI) are incompatible with the AT-GPIB/TNT card (ISA), and the USB gadget was on hand.

  

The third-party detector software seems to run on the new PC. When going through the installation it asks the user to select one of the following:

GPIB-2

GPIB-2A (default)

GPIB-3

MCGPIB (PS/2)

AT-GPIB

None

 

In addition, there’s a paragraph in the third-party software manual that reads:

“The National Instruments GPIB card used in your computer should have its interrupts turned off. To accomplish this, most boards require a jumper to be set to “no interrupts,” and the interrupt option set to “none” in the GPIB.COM driver file. The setting in this file is changed by the IBCONF.EXE program, which is copied to the program directory during installation. If you are using the National Instruments PC2A board, the GPIB.COM that was copied to the program directory during installation can be used to replace the current GPIB.COM listed in your CONFIG.SYS file.”

 

The original AT-GPIB/TNT card has several jumpers on it, and if I interpret the nearby graphics on the card surface correctly, the jumpers seem to be in the factory default positions (in any case, the original system worked reliably). We have not tried to open the case of the GPIB-USB-A interface to see if it has jumpers that might need to be repositioned.

  

Some obvious initial questions include:

1. Can our new setup work at all, or must we hunt for a computer that will accept the old AT-GPIB/TNT card?

2.      What drivers do we need to install on the new computer to work with the GPIB-USB-A (or the AT-GPIB/TNT, if we need to use it instead)? Our lab’s EE has some NI CDs with drivers on them.

3.      What selection should we make in the third-party software installation (GPIB-2, GPIB-2A, etc.)?

 

[EEsRULEtheWORLD]

Hi, cerfe.

In response to your questions:

1. The GPIB-USB-A will interface with 3rd party GPIB devices.  Keep in mind that while the AT-GPIB/TNT is capable of reaching transfer rates of about 1.5 MB/s, while the GPIB-USB-A will limit you to about 650 KB/s.
2. In order to properly interface with your 3rd party device, you will need to install the correct version of the 488.2 driver that is compatible with both the GPIB-USB-A and Windows 98 OS.  This will be 488.2 version 2.2, which can be downloaded here.
3. You may want to check in Measurement and Automation Explorer to see if the GPIB-USB-A was renamed as GPIB-2, GPIB-2A, GPIB-3, etc.  If it was not, this is something that you will want to find out from the manufacturer of the detector software.  These names may represent different configurations associated with your 3rd party device.

I hope this helps.  Respond to this post with any more questions that you may have.  Have a great day!