[time-nuts] General Purpose Instrument Troubles

Bill Hawkins bill at iaxs.net
Fri Nov 26 23:28:55 EST 2004


Hubert,

That was the problem. The unit had an Air Force property tag. It
was listed on eBay by a guy who didn't know how to test it, etc.

The manual pointed to a two position jumper and said make sure
it is in the upper position. It wasn't.

Thank you very much for that clue. I've spent time with bus
analyzers and I was not looking forward to doing it again. Nor
did I want to learn to use software that was written by too many
programmers to do too many functions and options.

Best regards,
Bill Hawkins


-----Original Message-----
From: Hubert v. Bonhorst [mailto:hbonhorst at aol.com]
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 4:36 PM
To: bill at iaxs.net; Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] General Purpose Instrument Troubles


I do not think your problem is with the GPIB control or GPIB itself.
Probably your 1992 was originally sold to the miitary. Sometimes you even
find NSN on it. If this is the case the counter speaks a very special
language to control it. It has nothing to do with its native commands.
Internal to the counter you will find a GPIB board with some jumpers on it.
Have a look in the service manual and change to native code, After that
everything works perfect. If you have any result, please confirm by mail.
I do no longer have this counter, but it is a good instrument
Best regards
Hubert
DB7ME
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Hawkins" <bill at iaxs.net>
To: "Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement"
<time-nuts at febo.com>
Sent: Friday, November 26, 2004 8:27 PM
Subject: [time-nuts] General Purpose Instrument Troubles


> Have a Racal-Dana 1992 counter with a GPIB interface.
> Also have a National Instruments 488.2 ISA bus card with
> software dated July 2000, with PDF manuals. Found a PDF
> manual for the 1992 on the net and focused on the GPIB
> stuff.
>
> Hooked them up with an IBM 365 PC running Win98. NI 488.2
> controller sees the 1992. 1992 reacts when NI sends ID
> string, but nothing else works - all result in timeout.
>
> 1992 manual says it is using 1978 vintage GPIB, and I cannot
> find the ID string that the NI controller is using.
>
> I suspect that my problem is compounded incompatibilities.
> Is 488.2 compatible with the earlier 488?
>
> Any insight appreciated.
>
> Bill Hawkins
>
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