[time-nuts] HP5342A GPIB programming

John Miles jmiles at pop.net
Wed Jan 30 23:59:44 EST 2008


Kind of a dumb question, but you rebooted the PC, right?  Maybe the GPIB
device driver's receive buffers aren't being flushed properly by the Python
interface.

Are there any powered-down devices on the GPIB bus?

-- john, KE5FX

> -----Original Message-----
> From: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com]On
> Behalf Of Matt Ettus
> Sent: Wednesday, January 30, 2008 8:35 PM
> To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
> Subject: Re: [time-nuts] HP5342A GPIB programming
>
>
> So, after a couple of hours messing with it, I finally got the counter
> to tell me a frequency over GPIB.  The magic incantations, in Python
> are:
>
>         c.write('AUSR3LCT2ST2')
>         freq = c.read(20)
>
> Once I got that working, I set it up to print out the frequency at 1
> second intervals.  That worked for 5 minutes, and now the GPIB
> interface is essentially dead.  The counter appears to hear and act on
> commands, but some acknowledge pin must have died because everything
> times out now.  I think the GPIB is dead.
>
> So, given that, anybody have any suggestions on a replacement?  I just
> need something that counts to a few hundred MHz, has GPIB, is
> reliable, preferably small, and preferably doesn't have a loud fan?
>
> Also, anyone interested in a 5342A which works fine other than the
> GPIB interface?





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