PC to PC communication via GPIB in C#

[gilco]

Hi,

I'm looking for a way to use PC to PC communication via GPIB in C#.

There is an application (main application) that utilizes the NI measurement studio (7.0) to communicate via GPIB with various lab peripherals (power supply, scope, logic etc'); I would like to emulate those lab peripherals, by programming a server who will receive the GPIB commands, parse them and return an appropriate answer to the main application (as would the lab peripheral).

Is that possible? What would be a good way to do that? Is there a code link available?

Thanks,

   Gil.

[ScottieB]

Gil,

First, you should look into using NI-Device, a driver written for our PCI-GPIB cards exactly for this purpose.  It won't work with C#, it's C++ only, but you may find it interesting. 

The only way I can think of to do this in the C# .NET Language Interface is using the Board object and doing board.wait(LACS) and board.wait(TACS) to see when you're addressed as a listener or a talker respectively (you could use Notify if you wanted).  You can set the address with board with the PrimaryAddress property.  When the board is addressed as a talker, send data.  When it's a listener, read data.  It's sufficient for doing very simple read/write sorts of things, but gets complicated when you have SRQ's, clears, and more advanced GPIB stuff going on.

Hope this helps.

Scott B.
GPIB Software
National Instruments