I know this is a bit off-topic here, but has anyone here ever programmed an HP 59306A relay actuator
http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/product.jspx?cc=US&lc=eng&nid=-536900193.536882169 which consists of 6 SPDT relays programmable via GPIB? Over the years I have programmed a number of sophisticated instruments including spectrum analysers, lock-in amplifiers, the 5370B time-interval counter, 8970A noise figure meters, bench multimeter etc. On the face of it, I would think a box with only 6 relays to be much simpler than any of these, but I am having a hard time with it. It may be it's age - the commands needed might be a bit different from anything I know. I'm trying to control it with a National Instruments GPIB board in a Sun workstation. (It's on a PCI bus and is the same card one would use in a PC. ). Page 3-4 of the HP 59306A's manual (page 25 in the PDF) ) http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/redirector.jspx?action=ref&cname=AGILENT_EDITORIAL&cc=US&lc=eng&ckey=824199&nid=-536900193.536882169.07&pid=1000001496%3Aepsg%3Apro has an example program, but it's unlike any example I have ever seen. There's no ibdev, ibwrt or similar - its basically a list of the state (high or low) of the control lines and digital IO lines. Sequence #1 says EOP=high, REN=high, MRE=low, digital IO lines ascii '?' I assume this is basically dd=ibdev(0, gpib_address, 0, T3s, 1, 0); ibclr(dd); but I've no idea if this is so, since I'm not sure what lines ibclr() sets high/low. I guess I will have to set up some LEDs on the bus to see what is happening. I'm pretty sure the sequences 4 to 9 can be set with ibwrt(dd,"A",1); ibwrt(dd,"3",1); ibwrt(dd,"5",1); ibwrt(dd,"B",1); ibwrt(dd,"3",1); ibwrt(dd,"A",1); although it might be possible to use ibwrt(dd,"A35B35",6); (It's not clear to me if this can accept multiple commands at once). Anyone got any ideas of what NI commands can be used to executes sequences 1,2,3 and 10 in table 3-3? David Kirkby _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.