H Dave, Over the past 6 years I have bought 15 or more NI GPIB cards for use in PCs. Nearly all of them have been bought on eBay. They have all worked fine. National Instruments is the Rolls Royce of GPIB cards. Technical support and driver support is first rate for all sorts of operating systems and hardware, not just PCs. Their software includes good debugging tools and manuals as well. There are more NI GPIB cards than any other brand on eBay. They are the standard because they are simply the best and the easiest to use.
There are three kinds of national Instruments GPIB adapters I have purchased for the PC: 1) PCMCIA cards which come in two versions - newer and older. The older version, which has an attractive blue schematic design on it, comes in two variations. The PLUS variation has some advanced debugging capabilities but these capabilities do not work on later versions of Windows. The newer PCMCIA card is a rather dull light brown color. I typically pay about $175 to $225 for either version of PCMCIA cards. Both the newer and the older ones work fine. The PLUS version is very rare and usually goes for over $300. Be sure you get a PCMCIA card with a cable. The cable is the only thing that seems to have changed between the older veresion and the newer version. The cable can be pulled out of the older PCMCIA card because it is not locked into the card. It has a different, wider, connector on it. The newer PCMCIA card has a narrower cable on it with two tiny metal ears that lock/unlock it to the card. In my mind this newer, locking cable is a disadvantage because a good yank on the cable will pull the PCMCIA card right out of your laptop, which makes the laptop very unhappy. With the old, non-locking, cable if you yank on the cable it will separate from the PCMCIA card but at least the card stays in the laptop and you can plug the cable right back in. 2) The PCI card. These typically go for $150 on eBay. They are very good but they are pricey. They are very common on eBay. 3) The ISA card. If your PC has an ISA slot then this is a real bargain. They go for $25 on eBay. They are not as common on ebay as they once were because people think they are have been replaced with the PCI versions. Look for one that specifically says TNT PNP. These cards are Plug and Play and they actually do work that way even though they were one of the first plug and play cards to come out. They are bug free and they work fine. But they come in several versions not all of which are Plug and Play. So be sure the one you are bidding on says PNP on it. It is marked on the top of the card in clear letters. TNT was their name for the chip they designed that did all the GPIB interfacing. I have used John Miles software with the NI PCMCIA GPIB adapters I have. It works fine. There is no reason at all why it wouldn't work with any of the NI GPIB adapters. Dennis -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] This group seems to be very GPIB savvy, so I have a question (vaguely related to time and frequency) - is there a real difference between the half sized current one large chip NI PCI-GPIB card and the older and larger version with multiple chips that proceeded it ? Which would you buy on Ebay ? any gotchas ? This is of course among other things for use with John Miles software... and HP and Racal counters and so forth... Dave Emery N1PRE/AE _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
