Hello all,
Let me just go ahead and make this brief with bulletpoints.
- I work in a small company and we need to update an automated measurement setup as cheaply as possible
- Current setup: measurement equipment is pretty outdated (HP) and uses GPIB for I/O to Visual Basic and Excel on a Dell Optiplex GX620 PC
- I'm trying to convince leadership to purchase LabView and buy a new PC (the PC is for unrelated but legitimate reasons), but for this to work, I need to make sure the new PC can still connect with the old equipment through GPIB. Any additional cost with upgrading the equipment itself will spell doom for this project as I am new here.
- Equipment make and model:
- DMM: HP33401A
- DC Load: HP6060B
- Power supplies: HP6012A
- 'Scope: HP54602B (not a critical connection to GPIB)
- GPIB controllers: KIKUSUI DPO2212A
What has been tried:
- I laid out a prototype LabView interface with the one license we have available (2013 version) to prove that this would work. It does connect with and control the DMMs so far on a HP PC with Windows 7 (don't have the model available at the moment)
- The connection works only through VISA GPIB and not GPIB. Looking at the 'Measurement Instruments Explorer' also demonstrated that only with the VISA I was able to *IDN? the devices and go forward from there
So given all of these details, the question is what can I do to make sure that the new PC will still connect with the old equipment? I'm looking at hardware specs and see PCIe, as expected. I just want to make sure we don't buy it and find out that it does not have a GPIB card spot available. The port is no big deal since I can borrow it from another computer, but the slot still has to be on the motherboard.
Block Diagram of Measurement Setup (Bare minimum)
