[Premium-Rx] WJ Radio Control for GPIB

[John Miles]

> LabVIEW is a great solution to this problem.  Here is another approach
> to consider as well.
>
> I decided to slave a WJ-8712 to my HF-1000 so that I could make them
> kinda behave like an IC-7800 in master/slave receive capability.  You
> know, the simple stuff, like passing settings back and forth and having
> banks of memory channels. I also wanted a GUI display with all the
> widgets.
>
> My solution was to use PCs running Borland C++ Builder 6.0.  The Borland
> environment is very easy to use and allows for GUI development and
> real-world I/O.  The Borland tools are inexpensive compared to some
> other approaches.

They were a good deal before Microsoft released their Visual Studio Express
package for free.  The MS VS2005 package is great, although getting it set
up and configured for Win32 development requires a bit of sweat equity on
the user's part.  Google "Visual Studio Express" if interested in exploring
this route.

If you want to talk to a single GPIB instrument at a time under Win32 C/C++,
the gpiblib layer that my tools use (http://www.ke5fx.com/gpib/setup.exe)
can make the job very easy.  It's a DLL, so it should link easily with
either Borland- or MS-generated apps... and it has the advantage of
supporting Prologix boards as well as NI488.2 devices.

-- john, KE5FX