[time-nuts] NI GPIB cards
GandalfG8 at aol.com
GandalfG8 at aol.com
Fri Mar 21 06:07:53 EDT 2008
In a message dated 21/03/2008 02:13:32 GMT Standard Time,
die at dieconsulting.com writes:
This group seems to be very GPIB savvy, so I have a question
(vaguely related to time and frequency) - is there a real difference
between the half sized current one large chip NI PCI-GPIB card and the
older and larger version with multiple chips that proceeded it ?
Which would you buy on Ebay ? any gotchas ?
------------------------
I've no experience of the newer board, so not able to comment on any
differences, but I have recently identified one possible gotcha on the older board.
Out of a batch of four that were otherwise in excellent, as new, condition I
had two that weren't working.
Checking the boards showed that U10, the surface mount onboard oscillator,
was slightly lifted at one end on each of the faulty boards.
It turned out they'd been very lightly soldered and the joints had broken at
that end, there was no indication they'd been knocked or otherwise abused.
Examination of the two working boards showed similar weak soldering even
though the joints on those were still intact.
After removing and resoldering the oscillators all boards are working fine.
Other soldering on the boards looked ok but these, in surface mount terms
anyway, are quite large packages and the original soldering was definitely
inadequate.
I don't know if this was just a batch problem, or if it's a common issue
with these boards, but certainly something to watch out for.
Other than that, the boards do all they should and work well.
With radio equipment and other kit demanding PCI slots though, I'm finding
it more convenient now to use USB GPIB controllers.
Aside from a couple of the Softmark units from Australia I have two "proper"
units so far, an NI GPIB-USB-A and a CEC USB-488, both of which cost less on
Ebay than PCI cards often fetch, although getting them at the right price
required a fair bit of patience, and probably a fair bit of luck too:-)
One problem with these is that the NI installer for NI-4888.2 identifies the
CEC software as an OEM variation of NI-4888.2 and requires it to be
uninstalled before the NI software will install.
Unfortunately, the NI installed software does not then recognise the CEC
unit, and vice versa.
There may be a work around for this but I haven't pursued it too far as yet.
regards
Nigel
GM8PZR
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