Philips/Fluke PM3350A oscilloscope problems with AT/GPIB/TNT/ISA board

[Casualuser]

I keep getting time-out error messages on issuing *IDN? Could it be EOS problems? Please help.

[Schwede]

I have the same error with the Agilent E3643A? Can somebody help us?

[JohnM 64]

It could definitely be a problem with the EOS. Have you looked to see if the instrument uses a termination character, and if so which one? You may need to append this to the "*IDN?" string in order for the instrument to process the incoming command correctly. Your instrument will also need to be compliant with the SCPI standard (Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments) in order to respond to such commands as *IDN?, *TST?, and other standardized commands. This is probably not an issue, however, because most instruments produced today use SCPI.

I would also like to make you both aware that there are instrument drivers available for using these two instruments with LabVIEW. You can search for them from our instrument driver network, linked below. These drivers will make using the basic aspects of the instruments in LabVIEW much more simply.

National Instruments Instrument Driver Network

Have a great day.

John M
Applications Engineer

[JohnM 64]

It looks like I mistyped the link earlier. Here is a correct link:

Instrument Driver Network

Sorry for any confusion!

John M

[Casualuser]

Dear John M,

Within ibic, I could get my Philips/Fluke PM 3350A oscilloscope to go into "remote" mode. In this mode, the front panel control on the scope no longer works, but the word "remote" is shown on the front LCD display.

My problem is that I am still unable to talk to it once it is in "remote" mode. I do not have the scope's GPIB manual handy so I tried a few EOS such as 0x03, 0x0d, 0x0a, 0x1a in ibdev such as:

ibdev 0 8 0 13 0 0x03 [8 is the default scope IEEE 488 address that is set by Philips/Fluke]

The following ibclr would trigger the scope into "remote" mode.

The scope is configured as talker/listener.

What I want to do is to talk to this scope, record a 4096 byte waveform. and take it to microsoft excel for reporting purposes. I do not have additional software/hardware to help me out.

Please help.

Casualuser

[TongY]

Which version of the GPIB driver do you have, the newest driver for the AT/GPIB-TNT card is 1.7. Make sure you first you have a supported driver version. If you cannot find the manual, you can go to Fluke's website and download it from there, it is important to know the format of the command string and what kind of line feed(termination character) is needed.

In IBIC, please try the following to determine if there is a configuration problem:

ibfind gpib0 "Find the GPIB interface"
id = 32000
gpib0: ibsic "Clear the GPIB bus (Send Interface Clear)"
[0130] [cmpl cic atn] "Operation completed successfully"
gpib0: ibfind dev1 "Find device 1.Use appropriate instrument address"
id = 32xxx
dev1: ibwrt "*IDN?" "Write string to instrument. 488.2 instruments recognize this command and return their identification string"
count=5
dev1: ibrd 100 "Five bytes were sent. Read up to 100 bytes from the instrument"
Fluke xxx Multimeter "Instrument returns identification string"

If you have any configuration errors, you will get an error message in one of these steps. The NI 488.2 Software Reference Manual that came with your GPIB board has detailed descriptions of the error.

By the way, have you tried to use Measurement&Automation Explorer to configure the device? You should see your device in there first.

[dBolles]

Hello,

I am having the same problem with a FLUKE PM6666 frequency Counter.

If I issue a *IDN? query I get an error.

If I issue a ID?, I get the desired device descriptor string.

What are the differences between *IDN? and ID?

dBolles

[Dennis_Knutson]

*IDN? was standardized by IEEE-488.2 (1987). Prior to that, a manufacturer could use any command (or none at all) to get identification data. Your instrument could be older than the standard or the manufacturer didn't implement it.