[time-nuts] Off the wall: anyone with experience programmingHP3456A?

John Ackermann N8UR jra at febo.com
Sat Sep 10 14:14:35 EDT 2005


John Miles wrote:

>Interesting; I hadn't run across that.  The examples in the manuals commonly
>show multiple commands in a single string; maybe the old-school BASIC
>controllers were smart enough to pause briefly after transmitting semicolons
>or string terminators...?
>
>-- john, KE5FX
>  
>
You can usually string multiple commands together in a single message,
but after you send that message you need to wait a little while before
doing another ibwrt or sometimes ibrd.  In theory, the bus is supposed
to handshake to avoid that problem, but that's not always reliable on
the older instruments -- they will report that they're ready for another
command when in fact they aren't.  In fact, while doing this experiment
the 5370B would show "Err 1" (invalid command) on its display if I tried
to talk to the 3456A too soon after talking to the 5370.

73,
John





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