GPIB & HP 4280, is it possible?

[Ho]

I tried commnication to HP 4280, so I send "*IDN?" through Query on Device and Interfaces at "Measurement & Automation"
I expected the "HP 4280 ~~" but result was "NCM+000.005E-12, NGM+000.02E-6"
Those are not ID of instrument but result of measurement.

I don't know what I have to do, everyone near me is novice.
Help.

[A.S.]

Hello,
Thanks for contacting National Instruments. I couldn't find any information on the HP 4280 Capacitance Meter on the Agilent/HP website. Is it an older obsolete instrument? If so, it is quite possible that the instrument is not IEEE-488.2 compatible. It is probably an IEEE-488.1 (or simply, IEEE-488) based instrument. In this case, *IDN? will not work. IEEE-488.1 based devices use different commands, and have much fewer standard commands (like *IDN?) that they accept. So the best place to find the correct command set for your HP 4280 would be the programming manual for that instrument. You can try sending ID? instead. IEEE-488.2 being the current industry standard, Measurement & Automation (MAX) uses that protocol. Handshaking, etc is quite different t
oo. You can however use LabVIEW GPIB shipping examples to talk to your instrument, if you want to implement a simple test like MAX does. You can also use LabVIEW to talk to your IEEE-488.1 based instrument, but you just need to know the correct commands.
Check out the following link for some standard IEEE 488 commands that you can use:
http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/FD37C544505542F88625680400569E20?opendocument

Hope this information helps.

Anu Saha
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[J.Dred]

Hi!

did you found the solution for your problem with HP 4280 ? Cause I have the same problem.

[BerkO]

Hi J. Dred,

The thread is quite old however I did a quick search and you can find the manual <a href="http://www.home.agilent.com/upload/cmc_upload/All/80A90001.pdf">here.</a>

Remote commands start at page 140 and there doesn't seem to be a command that corresponds to the new identification standard.

Hope it helps.