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vrf GPIB cards

Question asked by VRFuser on Oct 20, 2006

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Hi All

This is a problem which has been acknowledged by Agilent in the past With no proposal for a fix!

Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Baranski, Detlef [mailto:Detlef.Baranski@pilkington.de]
Sent: 20 October 2006 12:09
To: VRF
Subject: AW: [vrf] GPIB cards

Did you use actual SW for your comparison ? Esp. Iolib 14.2 ?

-----UrsprÃ¼ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Phipps, Chris [mailto:Chris.Phipps@analog.com]
Gesendet: Donnerstag, 19. Oktober 2006 18:15
An: VRF
Betreff: RE: [vrf] GPIB cards

Hi David

Keep away from the Agilent USB solution it is very slow and has long built in timeouts etc. We have both Agilent and NI here and the NI
USB>GPIB is so much faster and more reliable, in fact about the same
speed as a full NI or Agilent ISA card! So NI gets my vote this time. We have 2 Agilent units which are now generally are unused.

But Andy Street (ex Agilent?) is to be listened to about your other options/alternatives.

All the best

Chris

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VRFuser Oct 19, 2006 7:54 AM
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     To All,

     I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience working with VEE
     and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of VEE, we are currently
      moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent 82357A USB to GPIB interface.
      Any suggestions?

     Thanks,

     Dave

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VRFuser Oct 19, 2006 8:47 AM
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Hi David,

From Agilent:
82357A USB-GPIB: ideal for laptops or PCs where you want to move the interface from one machine to another. The only downside is that it can be 'relatively' slow in applications where you have a small, tight loop
- e.g. reading one/two values of data back from an instrument per iteration of the loop. I found that an ancient Win95 PC with a very old HP GPIB card in beat a 2GHz laptop with an 82357A hands down in this scenario (about 400 iterations in the loop). In my experience, this is probably the only downside - in general data transfer cases it compares well (and then you need to start considering the speed of the instrument etc).

82350 PCI-GPIB: fits in a desktop, no good for a laptop. Beats an 82357A in fast looping with small data transfers.

E5810 LAN-GPIB: could be interesting. RJ45 connector into your PC, Cat5 cable out to the E5810 and then GPIB to your instruments. Effectively you are putting LAN onto your GPIB-based instruments. Means you can have your PC 100m from the E5810 using Cat5 crossover cable - further if you start using LAN hubs,switches etc.

I only have limited experience with NI GPIB cards. Always the age old issue of then having multiple vendor software on the PC, who you call first for tech support etc.

My experience of 3rd party cards has not been good. Whilst these cards can be 25-30% cheaper than Agilent/NI cards, they can catch you out. I have had experiences where the driver for the card does not support VEE's IEEE488.2 binary block transfer mode (upshot is that you change from an Agilent card to 3rd party and your code no longer works) - so you end up having to write a generic routine to work with all cards.
Another instance I have experienced is where a 3rd party card did not generate interrupts properly.

So I would go with either Agilent or NI. USB for flexibility. LAN if you want distance. PCI card if you are looking for best performance with a lot of small data transfers that need to be done quickly.

Hope this helps

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Mairs, David [mailto:david.mairs@hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 10:54 AM
To: VRF
Subject: [vrf] GPIB cards

     To All,

     I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience
working with VEE
     and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of
VEE, we are currently
      moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent
82357A USB to GPIB interface.
      Any suggestions?

     Thanks,

     Dave

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VRFuser Oct 19, 2006 9:05 AM
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Dave:
We have been using GPIB PCI cards from MeasurementComputing (now NI) and from Agilent.
Recently we hit problems when trying to use GPIB cards from MC on new PCs with XP Pro.
We tried the Agilent 82357A and it works without a hitch.
Our applications don't require much speed.
Regards
David Jazcilevich

-----Original Message-----
From: Mairs, David [mailto:david.mairs@hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 4:54 PM
To: VRF
Subject: [vrf] GPIB cards

     To All,

     I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience
working with VEE
     and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of
VEE, we are currently
      moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent
82357A USB to GPIB interface.
      Any suggestions?

     Thanks,

     Dave

---
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VRFuser Oct 19, 2006 9:16 AM
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Hi David

Keep away from the Agilent USB solution it is very slow and has long built in timeouts etc. We have both Agilent and NI here and the NI
USB>GPIB is so much faster and more reliable, in fact about the same
speed as a full NI or Agilent ISA card! So NI gets my vote this time. We have 2 Agilent units which are now generally are unused.

But Andy Street (ex Agilent?) is to be listened to about your other options/alternatives.

All the best

Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Mairs, David [mailto:david.mairs@hp.com]
Sent: 19 October 2006 15:54
To: VRF
Subject: [vrf] GPIB cards

     To All,

     I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience
working with VEE
     and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of
VEE, we are currently
      moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent
82357A USB to GPIB interface.
      Any suggestions?

     Thanks,

     Dave

---
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VRFuser May 13, 2016 4:05 PM
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One other subtle item to look out for on the 82357A. On original release the card did NOT support GPIB pass-thru. Last time I checked, about 6 months ago, this was still true. I suspect this version of the USB-GPIB will never support GPIB pass thru (conjecture on my part). The pass-thru capability is a very NICHE user environment. From my experiences, most notably when old LEGACY Spectrum Analyzers (8560s - 8590s - etc.) and older LEGACY Network Analyzers (8510s - 8753s - 8719s - 872xx), equipped with GPIB ONLY, had to TAKE control from the GPIB card to execute things like HPGL GPIB based plotter dumps and GPIB based power meter source calibrations (to the power meter by the network analyzer). This affects VERY few users - but it is still important to be aware of this limitation.

Hope this helps.

Agilent Technologies has a new user forum that is focused on network analysis applications and products . Be sure to visit the forum the next time you're on-line.

Sincerely,
Tom Silchia
Agilent Technologies, Inc.
Americas Contact Center
800 829-4444

-----Original Message-----
From: Mairs, David [mailto:david.mairs@hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 8:54 AM
To: VRF
Subject: [vrf] GPIB cards

To All,

I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience working with VEE
and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of VEE, we are currently
moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent 82357A USB to GPIB interface.
Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dave

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VRFuser Oct 19, 2006 5:21 PM
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I have Two NI PCI cards in a PC and alsoÂ two Agilent USB/GPIB adatpters all work fine. I cannot say I have expirienced Chris's issue with timouts being too long on the agilent USB adapaters that might be settigns in the driver that may need changing. As far as speed is concerend can't really say I notice any difference between the USB or the PCI cards. Given the different datarates of the interfaces I would expect a USB adapter to be slower then a PCI.

"Phipps, Chris" <Chris.Phipps@analog.com> wrote:

Hi David

Keep away from the Agilent USB solution it is very slow and has long
built in timeouts etc. We have both Agilent and NI here and the NI
USB>GPIB is so much faster and more reliable, in fact about the same
speed as a full NI or Agilent ISA card! So NI gets my vote this time. We
have 2 Agilent units which are now generally are unused.

But Andy Street (ex Agilent?) is to be listened to about your other
options/alternatives.

All the best

Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: Mairs, David [mailto:david.mairs@hp.com]
Sent: 19 October 2006 15:54
To: VRF
Subject: [vrf] GPIB cards

To All,

I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience
working with VEE
and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of
VEE, we are currently
moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent
82357A USB to GPIB interface.
Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dave

---
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VRFuser Oct 19, 2006 6:21 PM
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Hello David:
We use both NI PCI and USB GPIB card in our factory, and don't find any problem. Please ensure the Agilent I/O Libraries is opened and only the green LED on card is light, you can play your testing.

Br
/Chunyan

-----Original Message-----
From: Street, Andy M [mailto:andy.street@tycoelectronics.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 23:47
To: VRF
Subject: RE: [vrf] GPIB cards

Hi David,

From Agilent:
82357A USB-GPIB: ideal for laptops or PCs where you want to move the interface from one machine to another. The only downside is that it can be 'relatively' slow in applications where you have a small, tight loop
- e.g. reading one/two values of data back from an instrument per iteration of the loop. I found that an ancient Win95 PC with a very old HP GPIB card in beat a 2GHz laptop with an 82357A hands down in this scenario (about 400 iterations in the loop). In my experience, this is probably the only downside - in general data transfer cases it compares well (and then you need to start considering the speed of the instrument etc).

82350 PCI-GPIB: fits in a desktop, no good for a laptop. Beats an 82357A in fast looping with small data transfers.

E5810 LAN-GPIB: could be interesting. RJ45 connector into your PC, Cat5 cable out to the E5810 and then GPIB to your instruments. Effectively you are putting LAN onto your GPIB-based instruments. Means you can have your PC 100m from the E5810 using Cat5 crossover cable - further if you start using LAN hubs,switches etc.

I only have limited experience with NI GPIB cards. Always the age old issue of then having multiple vendor software on the PC, who you call first for tech support etc.

My experience of 3rd party cards has not been good. Whilst these cards can be 25-30% cheaper than Agilent/NI cards, they can catch you out. I have had experiences where the driver for the card does not support VEE's IEEE488.2 binary block transfer mode (upshot is that you change from an Agilent card to 3rd party and your code no longer works) - so you end up having to write a generic routine to work with all cards.
Another instance I have experienced is where a 3rd party card did not generate interrupts properly.

So I would go with either Agilent or NI. USB for flexibility. LAN if you want distance. PCI card if you are looking for best performance with a lot of small data transfers that need to be done quickly.

Hope this helps

Andy

-----Original Message-----
From: Mairs, David [mailto:david.mairs@hp.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 19, 2006 10:54 AM
To: VRF
Subject: [vrf] GPIB cards

     To All,

     I'm researching the best GPIB solution for a PC, my experience
working with VEE
     and instrument control is with UX and much older versions of
VEE, we are currently
      moving our testing to the PC. I'm leaning towards the Agilent
82357A USB to GPIB interface.
      Any suggestions?

     Thanks,

     Dave

---
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