[time-nuts] NI GPIB cards

Patrick optomatic at rogers.com
Sat Mar 22 17:57:02 EDT 2008


I too buy a fair number of GPIB cards, about 10-15 a year for use in the 
equipment I sell. I have bought four NI GPIB PCI cards in the last few 
months. One did not work as expected. I was horrified when I called NI. 
They asked that I pay > $200 U.S for a "support contract" so that they 
could provide technical support for the card I just bought from them. 
There is no longer any free technical support. You will be referred to 
an online forum were you can get help from other users.

I am presently testing a GPIB card from INES(Germany). Their old drivers 
did not allow drop in replacement but hopefully their new one will. I am 
not sure if anyone has had any experience with Quancom(Germany) but 
their cards look pretty cheap.

Happy Easter to our Christian members and Happy new year to our Persian 
ones.

-Patrick



Dennis Tillman wrote:
> H Dave,
>
> Over the past 6 years I have bought 15 or more NI GPIB cards for use in PCs.
> Nearly all of them have been bought on eBay. They have all worked fine.
> National Instruments is the Rolls Royce of GPIB cards. Technical support and
> driver support is first rate for all sorts of operating systems and
> hardware, not just PCs. Their software includes good debugging tools and
> manuals as well. There are more NI GPIB cards than any other brand on eBay.
> They are the standard because they are simply the best and the easiest to
> use.
>
> There are three kinds of national Instruments GPIB adapters I have purchased
> for the PC:
> 1) PCMCIA cards which come in two versions - newer and older. The older
> version, which has an attractive blue schematic design on it, comes in two
> variations. The PLUS variation has some advanced debugging capabilities but
> these capabilities do not work on later versions of Windows. The newer
> PCMCIA card is a rather dull light brown color. I typically pay about $175
> to $225 for either version of PCMCIA cards. Both the newer and the older
> ones work fine. The PLUS version is very rare and usually goes for over
> $300. Be sure you get a PCMCIA card with a cable. The cable is the only
> thing that seems to have changed between the older veresion and the newer
> version. The cable can be pulled out of the older PCMCIA card because it is
> not locked into the card. It has a different, wider, connector on it. The
> newer PCMCIA card has a narrower cable on it with two tiny metal ears that
> lock/unlock it to the card. In my mind this newer, locking cable is a
> disadvantage because a good yank on the cable will pull the PCMCIA card
> right out of your laptop, which makes the laptop very unhappy. With the old,
> non-locking, cable if you yank on the cable it will separate from the PCMCIA
> card but at least the card stays in the laptop and you can plug the cable
> right back in.
>
> 2) The PCI card. These typically go for $150 on eBay. They are very good but
> they are pricey. They are very common on eBay.
>
> 3) The ISA card. If your PC has an ISA slot then this is a real bargain.
> They go for $25 on eBay. They are not as common on ebay as they once were
> because people think they are have been replaced with the PCI versions. Look
> for one that specifically says TNT PNP. These cards are Plug and Play and
> they actually do work that way even though they were one of the first plug
> and play cards to come out. They are bug free and they work fine. But they
> come in several versions not all of which are Plug and Play. So be sure the
> one you are bidding on says PNP on it. It is marked on the top of the card
> in clear letters. TNT was their name for the chip they designed that did all
> the GPIB interfacing.
>
> I have used John Miles software with the NI PCMCIA GPIB adapters I have. It
> works fine. There is no reason at all why it wouldn't work with any of the
> NI GPIB adapters.
>
> Dennis
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: die at dieconsulting.com
>
> 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 ?
>
> This is of course among other things for use with John Miles software... and
> HP and Racal counters and so forth...
>
> Dave Emery N1PRE/AE
>
>
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