[Test-Equipment] GPIB scrips for HP 8657B? WAD: Signal Generator Wanted

[Francesco Ledda]

Of course, they are affordable! All R&D expenses paid by HP! 

Sent from my iPhone

> On Sep 18, 2014, at 19:30, "Thomas Frobase" <tfrobase at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Take a look at eBay, search for an 82357B  Chinese clones are affordable and
> work well ... tom, N3LLL 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Test-Equipment [mailto:test-equipment-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On
> Behalf Of KA4INM radio
> Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2014 6:47 PM
> To: Discussion of Electronic Test Equipment
> Subject: Re: [Test-Equipment] GPIB scrips for HP 8657B? WAD: Signal
> Generator Wanted
> 
>   On 09/18/14 16:43, Dennis Wade wrote:
> 
> /*snip*/
>>             I'm interested in the possibility of creating a sweep 
>> script for the 8657B using the GPIB interface.  I know very little so 
>> far, but what I've read seems encouraging and I've looked at the 
>> various GPIB toolkits.  Way overkill for what I'm interested in, but 
>> it would seem to me if its feasible someone would have done it...and I 
>> haven't found any examples yet.  I've done some programming (not GPIB) 
>> in a previous life
> 
>>              So a couple of specific questions:
> 
>>                   1.  GPIB cards/boxes.  I see that there are HP GPIB 
>> cards on the E-place for quite reasonable prices, while the National 
>> Inst. and Prologix stuff are much less reasonable.  What do I need?  PCI,
> USB, RS232?
>>  I have read Phil's web page on the topic.
> 
>   Any hookup that float's your boat.
> 
>>                    2.  Ideally what I'd want is a GUI that would let 
>> me enter the start freq, end freq and amplitude and maybe number of 
>> repetitions...that's pretty much it.  Seems like a simple idea, but is 
>> this something an 8657B can even do reasonably?  I'm thinking of 
>> settling time each time it has to change frequency and how that might 
>> limit a sweep function.
> 
>   This is what the scripting language is good for.