gpib question #1

[Don]

Hi,
I posted this message on comp.hp.blah and they told me I might have
betterluck here. The message follows. I am currently using a
measurementcomputing gpib card, so I hope this is welcome on the national
instrumentsgroup 🙂
I am fairly new to gpib programming and I keep getting the following
message.
"Run time error 32520: Device is not active or available". I am using
visual basic and agilent I/O libraries to control/obtain data over the
gpib bus. Currently I'm controlling an hp 53132A freq counter and an
hp 54503a scope. I think the problem is related to the counter,
that's the point where my program seems to crash. Anyway I count use
a for loop to cycle through maybe 5 times through the measurements and
it works fine until about the 4th or 5
th time and then I get the above
message.

How do you guys usually make sure that your instrument is cleared,
ready to make a measurement and then make sure the measurement has
been sent and the measuring device is ready to take a new measurement.
I have even been putting two second pauses after the I/o measurements
to make sure that they have time to complete (this seems necessary,
otherwise I immediately get a time out error if i don't put in the
pause). Anyway I am using iwrite and ivscanf as my primary functions
in visual basic in order to do the writing and reading.

Thanks!

[Ben]

Hi Don,

I am afraid I will re-direct you one more time.

Use Brian Renken's Search engine (de-select the search web option) to search on GPIB topics.

There have been many discusions of GPIB and all of the peculiarities of same on "Info-LabVIEW" (currently down I am afraid).

Search over the last 3 years. There have been at least two "doctoral thesis" on GPIB posted and discussed.

The Search engine can be found at

http://www.searchview.net/

Ben