Saving Data on a HP4145B Semiconductor Analyser

[fourierpwn]

Hi all,

I am using a HP4145B to grab some IV data of some mosfets. This equipment has a 3.5" floppy disk which is required to boot up. I have done my measurements, everything looks good but I don't know how I can get the data out of the equipment.

I have tried using GPIB but the command reference in the manual is lacking to say the least. Does anyone have experience with talking to this instrument or know of another way I can save the data to a text file?

[alm]

If the floppy drive is fairly standard, you could consider replacing it with one of the floppy emulators that let you use a USB stick or SD card. This approach has worked in several other HP instruments from that vintage. You may need to make an adapter if the pin-out does not match. See this forum thread describing the modification.

An alternative way is to try to use the 7470 GPIB plotter emulator to capture the data.

Reading through the manual, reading data via GPIB seems quite straight-forward: DO 'foo' should request the data from channel foo. To get started, try doing the setup through the front panel and only execute the DO command through GPIB. Or try the sample programs. Can you elaborate how you think the manual is lacking? Seems like a fairly standard reference manual that assumes you are already familiar with operation of the device and explains how to map each specific action to a GPIB command.

[fourierpwn]

Thanks for the reply.

Reading through the manual, reading data via GPIB seems quite straight-forward: DO 'foo' should request the data from channel foo. To get started, try doing the setup through the front panel and only execute the DO command through GPIB. Or try the sample programs. Can you elaborate how you think the manual is lacking? Seems like a fairly standard reference manual that assumes you are already familiar with operation of the device and explains how to map each specific action to a GPIB command.

I did try to set everything up via the front panel and then run DO command, however the front panel is disabled if you have GPIB connected and once you open the communication link the instrument resets even when *RST has not been sent (this was in Matlab)

Because of having to configure the entire setup over GPIB I quickly gave up and promptly blamed it on the manual when it was more likely my lack of understanding that was the problem.

I have now got the data off of the equipment.

For future reference, there is some software called Win4145 / WinICS which requires a license however they offer a free 30 day trial. This software is designed to communicate with the 4145A/B (and various other SMU's) and it did the job. However, it only works on PC's/laptops that are running Windows 7 or older (XP, 2000 etc)

Hope this may help someone in the future