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From: abduln on 10 Mar 2006 17:00
Hello all,

A low cost GPIB-USB controller is now available from:
http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=549

It can be used to control GPIB instruments and download data and screen
plots.

Thanks,

From: Joerg on 10 Mar 2006 17:25
abduln(a)gmail.com wrote:

> Hello all,
>
> A low cost GPIB-USB controller is now available from:
> http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=549
>

Nice, but $125 isn't exactly low cost. It's a long time ago but we used
to buy GPIB card for the old ISA bus for under $100. Think about another
"de-featured" version. Most people only need them to get screen prints
out of an instrument, not to control them.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
From: abduln on 10 Mar 2006 17:44
Joerg,

Thanks for your suggestion.
Compared to the $500 GPIB-USB dongles from NI, Agilent and others isn't
$125 low cost?

Regards,

From: Joel Kolstad on 10 Mar 2006 18:31
<abduln(a)gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1142030660.424740.64160(a)z34g2000cwc.googlegroups.com...
> Compared to the $500 GPIB-USB dongles from NI, Agilent and others isn't
> $125 low cost?

Sure, for the hardware... but is your converter compatible (software-wise)
with the NI cards? Are there LabView drivers for it? If the answer to either
of those is "no," I can tell you that a lot of companies won't care about your
low price -- the engineering time to modify their software wouldn't make it
worthwhile. (True story -- that I've mentioned before --: Tektronix still
uses PDP-11's as part of their probe manufacturing lines. Although they pay
an arm and a leg to keep those PDPs alive, it's apparently cheaper than
migrating to newer, cheaper hardware and porting the software!)

I was rather pleased to find that some old test software we had for an NI ISA
GPIB card worked flawlessly (no changes required) with the NI USB GPIB
dongles; they've maintained pretty broad compatibility between all their
interfaces over time (granted, they aren't perfect -- their _original_
USB<-->GPIB dongle was only supported up through Windows 98... grrr!).
Similarly, NI provides some nice LabView drivers (no surprise there, eh?) that
make it very fast to development LabView apps that "speak" GPIB.

For someone writing new software, though, I think your dongle looks like a
good bargin. Although you might want to stick it in a case to make it look
more like a "finished product!"

---Joel Kolstad


From: Joerg on 10 Mar 2006 19:25
Hello Joel,

>
>>Compared to the $500 GPIB-USB dongles from NI, Agilent and others isn't
>>$125 low cost?
>

For USB it is, but there are (were?) ISA cards for much less.

>
> Sure, for the hardware... but is your converter compatible (software-wise)
> with the NI cards? Are there LabView drivers for it? If the answer to either
> of those is "no," I can tell you that a lot of companies won't care about your
> low price -- the engineering time to modify their software wouldn't make it
> worthwhile. ...


Not that it was required but the cheap ISA cards actually were fairly
compatible, AFAIR. I have to say though that their documentation was
hardly intelligible but for us it worked.


> ... (True story -- that I've mentioned before --: Tektronix still
> uses PDP-11's as part of their probe manufacturing lines. Although they pay
> an arm and a leg to keep those PDPs alive, it's apparently cheaper than
> migrating to newer, cheaper hardware and porting the software!)
>

Oh man. Time to make the switch before something breaks and cannot be
replaced. This is like flying a critical mission with a DC3. Not that it
wouldn't be safe but one busted engine can put you out of service for a
long time. Sometimes a down-time of a few weeks can bring great troubles.

I have modernized quite some production gear, usually after asking
questions like "What if this thing over here breaks?" and the response
was an eerie silence.

Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
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