[time-nuts] Off the wall: anyone withexperienceprogrammingHP3456A?

[John Miles]

> There are very strict limits to how many units you can have powered down
> on an IEEE-488 bus and it depends on the bus topology etc.  It is also
> pretty easy to violate the topology constraints if you don't stick
> closely to star or line configurations.
>
> It's all in the standard somewhere.

Hmm.  From what I can tell via Google, the rule is that you're supposed to
have two-thirds of the devices on the GPIB bus powered on.  Good to know,
even though most of the devices I have don't seem to enforce this guideline.

I'll refrain from editorializing on the wisdom of designing an interconnect
bus with a rule like that, as foaming-at-the-mouth howling rants are OT for
the time-nuts list.

-- john, KE5FX