TDS Field Adjust Software and an NI GPIB-232CT-A

[Tony_G]

Hi All,

In trying to get the TDS Field Adjust Software working, I brought out an old NI GPIB-232CT-AT adapter that I have. This plugs into the serial port but when it runs the NI drivers it looks just like any other NI card in DOS/Windows.

I verified that the device is working and that it can talk to the TDS 574D but I'm having trouble getting the TDS Field Adjust Software to recognize it - I understand that the software was written for a specific card but I'm hoping someone might have already played around with the values for "SET GPIB0" and can provide some insight?

This thread has some more information on the software and the GPIB0 setting:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/tektronix-tds700a-field-adjust-software-help-needed/msg563427/#msg563427

Any help appreciated.

Thanks,

TonyG

[Andy Watson]

How did you check that it was talking to the TDS? Do you have the facilities to write directly from your keyboard and display the returned messages? It should be possible to ask the TDS to identify itself via relatively simple ASCII commands - paying particular attention to the requirement (or not) of things like carraige return characters and end-of-message controls. Is the rs232-gpib passing all the characters, or is it filtering some of the controls (like ctrl-q and ctrl-s)?

[Tony_G]

Hi Andy,

I ran through the steps listed here:

http://www.ni.com/support/gpib/max/ibic.htm

and read the IDN string using the "ud0: ibrd 100" command - This shows that the GPIB adapter and NI drivers are working.

This issue I believe is that the field adjust software expects a particular board and has some options for setting that board up - I'm hoping someone has already poked around with it to get it working witht eh serial adapter and can give me some hints on getting it running.

TonyG

[andy2000]

It's been a few years since I've looked at it, but I'm almost sure the field adjustment software has its own built in driver that talks directly to the GPIB card.  I don't think you even need the DOS driver installed.

[timb]

It's been a few years since I've looked at it, but I'm almost sure the field adjustment software has its own built in driver that talks directly to the GPIB card.  I don't think you even need the DOS driver installed.

This is correct. Someone around here wrote a QEMU driver for that specific GPIB card, so the TDS FAS could be run in DOS inside QEMU. It essentially forwards commands to the Linux /dev/gpib interface if I remember correctly.

Basically, you can go with that option and a reasonably new GPIB adapter (USB, LAN or PCI based) *or* you can buy the required NI GPIB adapter (ISA based) on eBay and run the software on an old PC.

I'm still not sure why Tek hard coded the drivers into the FAS. There seems to be no reason they couldn't have hooked into NI's own drivers... Hell, NI even provides examples, headers and libraries for several dialects of BASIC, C and Pascal!

If they had used NI's drivers, it would have made it very easy to do what (I assume) you're trying to do; that is, run the software in a VM and use a serial based GPIB interface.

I actually have an old PC (a pimped out Compaq Portable III) with an ISA GPIB card (the ASIC based PnP version) I was planning to use for the FAS, but couldn't because of the stupid hard coded drivers.

That said, most of NI's ISA cards were very similar, so I was thinking of decompiling the FAS and seeing if I could get it to work with my card.

[Tony_G]

Thanks TimB - That's exactly what I'm trying to do - Run the FAS software in a VM on my main desktop machine at home.

Looks like it's off to EBay I go to try and find a machine with an ISA slot in it.

TonyG