[time-nuts] NI GPIB cards

Jan Fredriksson jan at 41hz.com
Sun Mar 23 13:46:18 EDT 2008


There are also some USB versions of the NI GPIB. These 
are driver compatible with the NI drivers for the other cards,
you do not need any extra drivers or software changes.
The USB-GPIB from NI are available in at least three versions 
so far. On Ebay, they seem to be selling at between $250 and $400.
The first vesion was USB(1) and had moderate data transfer rates
while the latest are USB2 and GPIB high speed.
  
One advantage with all, is that you do not need the bulky 
GPIB cable, only a USB cable between the PC and the first
instrument. The actual electronics are hidden in the GPIB 
connector and the whole thing powers from the USB bus.

A drawback with USB is that trigging/synking multiple
hardware by GPIB via USB is probably less accurate than 
GPIB via the ISA or PCI bus.  

There are less common GPIB, like for the PXI and VIX busses,
GPIB<=>RS232, GPIB<=>Ethernet.
Lately thee are also GPIB fo PCI-Express.

I have used many NI GPIG models over the last 15 years and never 
had any problems except that the PCI version could in some cases
do an instant reboot of our Win2000 and XP boxes, if the GPIB 
software was badly configured.

Jan F



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