GPIB board drivers for Solaris

I had an HP85 computer hooked up to a spectrum analyser in 1978, and GPIB was certainly well established and supported by most instrument vendors by then, so I would guess that it has been around since at least the early 1970s. HP invented the standard as HP-IB and it was later adopted as IEEE 488, which is a published standard.

We did check radio sets using spectrum analysers and many other automated HP-IB devices on a HP-1000 in 1975 while I was working for Telefunken.

The devices did not look really new at that time.

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I think we should be impressed by a standard which has remained in use unchanged for over 30 years. A design engineer somewhere deserves some kind of medal.

My Tektronix TDS-210 scope I bought a few years ago and added an FFT and communications module to has GP-IB, RS232 and parallel. I have only been able to use the serial and parallel yet. Parallel for producing postscript printouts and serial to control it.

I see their current models can also be equipped with GP-IB.

It also helps that HP was willing to license the patents to anyone for an extremely reasonable fee; last I heard (1980 something) the license was about $200US. It made the technology extremely attractive to instrument makers, computer vendors, software developers, etc. Add the fact that there was no competing standard worthy of the name and the deal was done!

It likely helps that it's not a consumer standard.

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In response to what Richard B. Gilbert posted in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:

But there were doubts about the validity of the patent - relating to the three-wire handshake - on the grounds that it was obvious and any competent engineer would have done it that way.

Most manufacturers of IEEE488-compatible equipment simply ignored the patent and went ahead anyway. I never heard of any being sued by HP.

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Somehow this jogged my memory, and I remember a Centronics connector - like a parallel printer, but not as big. So, before making a public fool of myself, I looked them up:

Oh, well, different number of pins. :-) And HPIB, of course, can piggyback for daisy-chains. (I saw a training video once at Control Data, where the lecturer mentioned daisy-chaining, and noted "Nobody really wants to talk about where that particular term came from...")

Cheers! Rich

And Motorola made the 68488 chip, which allowed a simple microprocessor to become IEEE488 capable.

I first used it for controlling a Fluke high voltage power supply from a computer, putting it between the Fluke's own wide interface and the computer which needed to control the power supply (a HP 9825 IIRC).

Later, I designed a controller for Diablo daisywheel printers to allow some friends to connect them to their Commodore PETs, using the

68488 and a 6802 as the "smarts".

Enjoy, DoN.

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Someone elsewhere provided this reference:

which is a reference to a 1972 HP Journal Article by "G. E. Nelson and D. W. Ricci"

rick jones

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well, National Instruments updated their drivers around 98/99 to support more "instruments/gpib-enet" devices, 128 i think it is. /Jörgen