Thanks, I think you answered my question here.
Jed Rothwell wrote:
Stephen A. Lawrence wrote:
I could see no indication that the Yokogawa power meters are used for
data acquisition during the glow-discharge period . . .
It is one meter (not meters),
It really seems to be meterS. According to his papers he used both a
Yakagawa PZ4000 and a Yakagawa WT130 at various times. They are both
power meters but the PZ4000 is substantially more sophisticated and
wider bandwidth. I would presume the WT130 came first and was later
replaced with the PZ4000 but that is just a guess.
and it is used for data acquisition during
the run. Why wouldn't he use it? It cost him an arm and a leg.
I understand that. My question was caused by the papers in which he
stated that he "calibrated" the data acquisition system using the
Yakagawa meter (one or the other) but then used an Advantest R7326-B
data logger to get voltage and current numbers into his computer; the
numbers apparently weren't sourced from either Yakagawa meter, as far as
I could tell in the papers. No mention was made of an HP device in the
papers I looked at.
I believe the the Advantest uses an IEEE-488 bus interface. The data
sheet for the Yagakawa PZ4000 doesn't mention IEEE-488 but _does_
mention a SCSI interface. If that meter is SCSI-only that could have
been a possible reason why he might _not_ have immediately replaced the
old data logger with it; SCSI's fast but the problems and limitations of
SCSI can make setting it up not quite a snap.
Or maybe the WT130 had no computer interface and the "calibration"
business was something he dispensed with when he got the PZ4000.
Whatever...
Actually, as I recall, at the latter stages of this research he no
longer bothered to use the HP gadget. The HP was spontaneously resetting
and going out to lunch when I was there, and I think he trashed it after
that. He depended solely upon the Yokogawa, which outputs the data in
all kinds of convenient formats.
Thanks, that statement pretty much puts to bed the issue I was raising.
It interfaces to the computer, kind of
like a super sophisticated version of the HP.
Yes, and with a SCSI interface it can go like blazes ... assuming the
computer can keep up, and assuming the cables aren't too long, and
assuming you've got the correct "apparently compatible" SCSI cable so
the bits don't all fall out of the cable onto the floor and cause the
bus to hang up... :-) SCSI's great when it works.
He has not done this experiment much since the cell blew up on him last
year.
Sounds wise.
