HP 3478A DMM not seen with PCI/GPIB 488.2

[geekly]

Hi All,

I'm really new at this so watch out...  I have an old 3478A which is compliant with the old HP-IB (GPIB) connector and I'm trying to communicate with it using a PCI/GPIB 488.2 card.  I found some drivers for Labview and that's wonderful but it simply doesn't work.  The automation explorer also doesn't see the device.  What am I doing wrong?  I read somewhere that you have to enable some old drivers but I the message was somewhat unclear now I'm just desperate.  Please help someone.

OS : win XP

Labview: 7.1

thanks 🙂

[AndrewAlford]

I am using the same DMM and having no problems.

1. Check the address of the DMM push "shift(Blue button), and then SRQ button (ADRS is printed above it in blue). Ensure no other instrument on the bus has the same address.

2. Open the Measurement & Automation Explorer.

3. Click on the + sign beside "Devices and Interfaces", then select the GPIB bus. If no instruments are shown click on the Scan For Instruments at the top of the screen.

The newer instruments will have a description beside them this is a response to the *IDN? command. The 3478A DOES NOT recognaize this instruction, if you send it the DMM will return a number. If you receive this number the device is working.

[geekly]

Hi Andrew,

Thank you for your reply.

My address is set to 23 (default) and it's the only device connected to the GPIB card.  When I scan for the instrument with the automation explorer, nothing is detected.  Could it be the cable I'm using?  I'm running the newest ni-daq, 488.2 softwares.  Am I not installing something or enabling some drivers?

all the best,

[AndrewAlford]

It is possible the cable is faulty. The cables I am using are National Instruments 763061-02 RevC; Type-X2. These cables work on all of the instruments I am using. Check the configuration of your GPIB Card, I have provided screen captures of my current settings that are working for me.

1. As before use the Measurement and Automation Explorer to get to the GPIB Bus under devices.

2.Right click on the GPIB Bus and select properties, you should see the following screen.

3. Click the Configure and on the next screen click Software>> button to see all of the options.

Try these settings(I have not made any changes these should be Default).

Message Edited by AndrewAlford on 11-25-2005 02:23 PM

[geekly]

Hi Andrew,

Cable and GPIB configuration matches your's but still scanning for the device doesn't work in the automation explorer.  I just don't know what I'm doing wrong or if there's anything else I can do to check if the computer even sees the 3478.  Thanks again.

david

[AndrewAlford]

Look on the back of the DMM, there is a seven position DIP switch on my DMM all switches are set to 0 (down). With this setting the address of the instrument is 1. Give this a try, if possible verify the GPIB board with another instrument.

[BrentSchenk]

did this ever get resolved? because I'm having the same problems and i know that my GPIB to USB cable is good and i can talk to other instruments just fine.  I'm just not able to see the DMM at all..

[MattBradley]

Did you try Andrew's suggestion to set the address to 1?  It probably worked because there were no more posts about it.

[BrentSchenk]

Actually yes i did something similar, i set the GPIB address to 0 which didnt actually do anything so i went and got another instrument (programmable attenuator, really old as well, first i could grab) and plugged that in along with it and changed the GPIB address back to 23 and all of a sudden it worked and it kept working no matter how i tried to get it to not work.  So im not sure what happened, but it did get solved, im just hoping i never run into the issue again, but thanks for the response!

[MattBradley]

Don't you love it when problems just go away?  Now, if I could just make that happen with certain people...