NI GPIB cards
This group seems to be very GPIB savvy, so I have a question
(vaguely related to time and frequency) - is there a real difference
between the half sized current one large chip NI PCI-GPIB card and the
older and larger version with multiple chips that proceeded it ?
Which would you buy on Ebay ? any gotchas ?
This is of course among other things for use with John Miles
software... and HP and Racal counters and so forth...
--
Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die@dieconsulting.com DIE Consulting, Weston, Mass 02493
"An empty zombie mind with a forlorn barely readable weatherbeaten
'For Rent' sign still vainly flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in
celebration of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."
It is always hard to tell with NI because they are so mumm about their
designs. If the new card works with old drivers (most will), it is probably
a repackaged version of the old card with more of the stuff in a gate array
or xPLD instead of discretes. If it requires (or recommends) a new driver,
it may be improved with regard to transfer rate or some obscure feature.
Other than that, in my experience, NI products have been remarkably
compatible in the last 10 years, from a 30,000 feet level (plug pretty much
anything into anything and it will work with any NI software, even though
performance will vary and you may need new drivers). Exceptions are things
like the bus snooping mode (forgot the name) which is only supported on the
internal, bus type adapters (not USB unfortunately).
Unless you need very fast transfer rate, buy the cheapest card you can find
that has the right bus. PCI cards are still fairly expensive (you will be
lucky to get one for less than $150), ISA cards are much cheaper ($20), but
of course they only work in a computer old enough to have ISA slots, and
transfer rate is an order of magnitude slower. NI USB controllers, even on
eBay, cost >$400 in most cases.
There are alternatives. Measurement Computing (www.mcc.com) has cards that
will work with NI software and are somewhat less expensive. IOTech also used
to make GPIB cards, but I believe they are out of the market. They still are
ISA IOTech cards on eBay on occasion, and they usually are compatible with
NI. I do not know if IOTech ever made PCI cards?
To use with John Miles software, a Prologix controller is hard to beat. New,
it costs less than a used NI PCI card on ebay, and is USB.
http://www.eds-fl.com/Test_Equipment/GPIB.html
Didier KO4BB
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com
[mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On Behalf Of David I. Emery
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 9:13 PM
To: time-nuts@febo.com
Subject: [time-nuts] NI GPIB cards
This group seems to be very GPIB savvy, so I have a
question (vaguely related to time and frequency) - is there a
real difference between the half sized current one large chip
NI PCI-GPIB card and the older and larger version with
multiple chips that proceeded it ?
Which would you buy on Ebay ? any gotchas ?
This is of course among other things for use with John
Miles software... and HP and Racal counters and so forth...
--
Dave Emery N1PRE/AE, die@dieconsulting.com DIE Consulting,
Weston, Mass 02493 "An empty zombie mind with a forlorn
barely readable weatherbeaten 'For Rent' sign still vainly
flapping outside on the weed encrusted pole - in celebration
of what could have been, but wasn't and is not to be now either."
time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe,
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11:31 AM
Didier Juges wrote:
Other than that, in my experience, NI products have been remarkably
compatible in the last 10 years, from a 30,000 feet level (plug pretty much
anything into anything and it will work with any NI software, even though
performance will vary and you may need new drivers). Exceptions are things
like the bus snooping mode (forgot the name) which is only supported on the
internal, bus type adapters (not USB unfortunately).
I can give you another annoying exception. The PCI card NI makes will
fit in a Sun SPARC (or UltraSPARC) based workstation, and works fine up
to versions 9 of Solaris. Then, with version 10 of Solaris, there is a
problem. The reason is that NI GPIB cards have always used the driver
name "ib" on Solaris. Since the first release of Solaris 10, Sun decided
to create a driver called "ib" for InfiniBand - obviously unaware
National Instruments had been using that driver name. Hence if you try
to install an NI GPIB card in a Sun running Solaris 10, you are likely
to get a problem.
If you don't need InfiniBand. support, then the solution is to remove
the InfiniBand driver and any packages which depend on it, in the
correct order, which the following line does.
pkgrm SUNWudapltr SUNWudapltu SUNWtavor SUNWrpcib SUNWipoib SUNWib
I managed to get Sun talking to National Instruments about this, but I
note in the latest release of Solaris 10, the "ib" driver is still
present. I also note that NI have not produced a driver which they claim
works in Solaris 10. There's more info in this thread, which I have just
updated the first time in a couple of years, to reflect my understanding
of it now.
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board/message?board.id=140&thread.id=15109
BTW, National Instruments sbus cards (fit older Suns) are cheap on eBay
and so are the old sbus based Suns. But NI want a small fortune for
Solaris drivers (399 UK pounds, which is about 800 US Solaris). But a
cheap SPARC 20, sbus card, drivers (if you have them lying around) and
Solaris 9 makes a pretty cheap and reliable system for GPIB. A
SPARCstation 20 is pretty compact and works fine without a keyboard or
moitor (use serial line to set it up, then ethernet afterwards).