GPIB+ card to capture data

[MayFlower]

I have two existing GPIB devices, I don't know the communication protocol they're using and what kind of specific GPIB hardware, I want to capture what's the detail data communication between them. So I want to add a PC with special GPIB card on this GPIB bus to capture all the signals and data in GPIB bus, then I will analyze the record. I guess I can use your GPIB+ card and GPIB Analyzer application, Is that possible? And, do you have PCMCIA GPIB+ card so that I can install in notebook to make the capturing work more convenient?

THanks

[Albert.Geven]

Hi

If you have an NI GPIB card and NI-spy installed on your system, you can already see a lot of the communication.
Only the hardware timing signals are not visible.
You see in fact all of the protocol. and I suspect that the system is working so you don't need the hardware timing.
The +card analyzer only adds this and that is a tremendoues help to solve handshaking problems but does not easily show the protocol in text.
So if you already have an NI gpib card start looking with NI-Spy

[Ted_H]

Albert is exactly right, a GPIB board with NI-Spy will allow you to see all the NI-488.2 driver commands being passed.  The GPIB+ and GPIB analyzer does the same thing NI-Spy does, but it also gives you hardware access to the bus lines and monitors handshaking activity.  As for PCMCIA options, NI no longer sells GPIB+ in the PCMCIA form factor, only the PCI interface is available.

Ted

[MayFlower]

Thanks to Albert and Ted. I tried to run NI-SPY, but it seems NI-SPY cannot help on my case. From "NI Spy Overview", it says "NI Spy is an application that monitors, records, and displays National Instruments API calls made by applications". What I'm doing is try to add my PC with GPIB+ card to an existing GPIB bus, to capture data flow between two unknown GPIB devices (not NI devices). I'm not debugging or troubleshooting my application. I guess I have to use GPIB Analyzer. I only have normal GPIB card on my hand, I cannot run GPIB Analyzer now.

Thanks