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I cut my teeth on IEE-488. I didn’t realize that it was still a thing.
by ChrisMarshallNY 10mo ago
I cut my teeth on IEE-488. I didn’t realize that it was still a thing.
- schobi 10mo agoLinux mainline kernel just had support for GPIB added. https://hackaday.com/2025/12/16/after-decades-linux-finally-gains-stable-gpib-support/ https://hackaday.com/2025/12/16/after-decades-linux-finally-...
- xyphro 10mo agoLinux gpib also supports my adapter natively with a special linux gpib firmware you can download from the page above. It also supports multiple instruments connected to one adapter then.
- georgeburdell 10mo agoThere’s a fairly large second-hand market for old electronics test equipment. A lot of that stuff only had GPIB ports, even well into the 90s. Cheap Chinese entrants (Rigol, Siglent, etc.) only within the last decade started making an impact
- 0xTJ 10mo agoI finished my Master's a couple years ago, and in our IC probing lab, it was almost all GPIB. All of the pieces of test equipment, except for a single cutting-edge Keysight scope (which used Ethernet instead), were connected together via those chunky but satisfying and robust cables, usually controlled via MATLAB or some other IC measurement software package.
- xyphro 10mo agoYes, those cables are often called "garden hose cables". The only benefit of that bus infrastructure under a nowadays view is that it gives the ability to synchronously trigger multple instruments which is very rarely used or required.
- emmelaich 10mo agoCrazy to think that the first HP9000 (PARISC) computers used GP-IB (aka HP-IB) for accessing disks!
- ChrisMarshallNY 10mo agoI used one of those (and an even older little workstation that I forget the name) to program GPIB ("HPIB") systems. This is my first ever engineering project, as a newly-minted electrical engineer (downloads a PDF): https://littlegreenviper.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TF30194-Manual-1987.pdf https://littlegreenviper.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/TF30...
- satertek 10mo agoI've worked places where the paperwork to hook something up via Ethernet drove us to use GPIB or RS485 for everything.
- xyphro 10mo agoI know that very well. Ethernet=security concern. Connecting your shiny new scope to company network=no way. Hard to discuss arround it in company environments or push for split network topologies.