I am looking for solution to provide GPIB-attached mass storage (floppy or emulation of floppy) for HP 8753 series network analyzer.
Has anyone successfully used the hpdrive project (URL below) which appears to use a PC (equipped with GPIB port, the project's software) to emulate a GPIB storage device, as a peripheral for HP 8753 series network analyzer (so that instrument state, etc., can be stored on what appears to the analyzer to be a GPIB-attached floppy drive such as HP 9122)?
Before I dig into this, I want to find out if this approach is practical/possible or would be wasted time/effort (hence I'd seek other solution, and be grateful for any recommendations, particularly a solution other than sourcing a used HP 9122.)
http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/
Thanks very much for any insight/pointers,
Dave
Hello Dave
For my hp8753C FW 4.01 , I have struggled with this issue for a while ( to save the cals and the instrument state since the hp8753c does not have a disk drive) and tried every solution possible (to my knowledge) and this the result of my experience in this subject:
1- hpdrive:
http://www.hp9845.net/9845/projects/hpdrive/
it is a command line utility, here you can set your pc to emulate an hp floppy drive (hp 9122) and use it with the hp8753. the hp8753 recognized it and I was able to save the states,cal files ... and anything that can be saved to the floppy drive. it worked very nice for me.
2- VNASTATE utility:
VNA Instrument State Software
is the best solution for me as it has a nice GUI and the support from its creators is very good.
I can save cal files, states and easily access them through the GUI
3-HPDISK
http://www.dalton.ax/hpdisk/
This is a hardware solution that needs you to get the HPDISK PCB. I tried it and got the board but didn't work for me.
I think it didn't work because of something to do with my 4.01 fw , but you can give it a try.
4-VNA Calkit Manager:
it didn't work for my vna.
note : all these solutions require a GPIB adapter, I used NI PCI-GPIB
PCI-GPIB - National Instruments
I hope this answers your question.
Hamdan