[time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card

Magnus Danielson cfmd at bredband.net
Mon Aug 22 18:29:45 EDT 2005


From: David Kirkby <david.kirkby at onetel.net>
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Re: Accuracy of a sound card
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2005 23:06:49 +0100
Message-ID: <430A4C79.3020602 at onetel.net>

David,

> > Unfortunately, while my 5328B has the HPIB interface, my PC doesn't, so
> > I cannot collect data automatically, otherwise it would have been a very
> > interesting experiment...

If you have the money, Tektronix have a nice little Ethernet/IP <-> GPIB
adapter. Stick it between your GPIB chain and LAN, surf into the webserver to
configure it and then use the VXI-11 RPC-based interface and access your GPIB
chain. Works really well. Can also be configured to work as a printer for
at least Tektronix-compatible devices (HP and Tek did things differently
because they could).

> If your PC has an ISA slot, or you have an older PC with an ISA slot, 
> then a GPIB board is not that expensive on eBay. Just save yourself a 
> lot of hassle and get one from National Instruments, as they are better 
> supported than other makes.
> 
> PCI GPIB cards are current, and so are *much* more expensive.

Yes, but I was fortunate enought to get one for reasnoble money. I use the
Linux GPIB drivers and my problems is more that I am a bad GPIB-programmer and
have yeat to learn all the quirks. (Maybe my HP3457As isn't the best to use as
a test-case, better bring up the HP5372A which I have done several projects on
succsefully over the years).

> I guess a modern sound card will not fit in an old PC with an ISA slot, 
> but there is nothing to stop you using a modern PC with the high-end 
> sound card, and an old PC with a cheap ISA card for the data collection.
> 
> There are free drivers for FreeBSD, linux and possibly Windoze, but I am 
> not sure about the latter.

You can download the drivers for Windoze from NI if you need to. They actually
have quite good documentation online.

Cheers,
Magnus



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