[Test-Equipment] Any GPIB and/or LabVIEW users?

[DaveC]

John,
Thanks for your story. It sounds so familiar. ;-)

I'm leaning toward a National USB-GPIB controller and LabView, both 
from e-Pain.

I've started reading up on LabVIEW. As you say, it looks like I've 
got my work cut out for me.

Thanks again for your experiences.

Dave

-=-=-=-

>I'm in roughly the same situation. I loved the 'quick and dirty' HP 85
>appreoach, but anything longer than a simple loop or two was really hard
>to edit on the tiny screen. The later HP 98xx did solve that but I never
>had one.
>
>Some months ago, I bought a NI PCMCIA GPIB card (if you go looking, there
>are THREE DIFFERENT, all incompatible, cables. Be warned).
>
>I was also able to get an older version of LabVIEW and have been trying to
>learn it. It is non-trivial.
>
>First off, LabView is radically different in most every way from something
>like HP 85 BASIC. There are a ton of conventions to learn and you have to
>do things "their way" or you get very obscure error messages. After a
>couple of days work, I now understand basically how it works, but so far I
>cannot read a DMM or flip a physical switch. I can process simulated
>signals in complex ways though.
>
>The reason I went with LabVIEW is the Instrument Driver library. I naively
>thought I could type in an instrument ID and talk-listen to it almost
>plug-n-play. This would save having to learn every instruments'
>instruction set. This now looks like an illusion, but I'm not sure.
>
>There are versions of the HP Test Basic that runs on PCs which are
>supposed to be like the HP 85 SW, but I don't think they run w/ the PCMCIA
>GPIB cards.
>
>My current feeling is there are no really simple ways to control a few
>instruments, except with something like an HP 85.  :((
>
>FWIW,
>
>-John