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Thank you Jason, you spreaded some light in the darkness

Also, I saw?and wonder if it is a good option for me, what you think? Are these ethernet-to-gpib boxes in some maner easier to handle and configure than the USB ones??

If it isn't a good option (maybe is out of date or complex config) I'll go for a NI USB adapter. If you know a realiable seller on eBay Europe, please, tell me. Still not very comfy with the idea of buying a counterfeit, but the price tag of the original or new NIs are totally out of my budget :D I only want to learn GPIB and tinker with my rack, no need to spend 500-1500 € in this.

Regards,
Ruben

Hi Ruben,

I guess it depends a lot on whether you want NI compatibility or not. In the latter case, you'll need to do some substantial coding work. I left Windows decades ago, so for me that was a non issue and I went for an original ProLogix GPIB-Ethernet, and coded almost all my equipment in Java.

Before that, I bought an Agilent GPIB-USB interface which lasted one lousy Friday evening. Counterfeit. Lesson learned.

Unfortunately, at ProLogix's current price point, I would seriously consider other options like DIY.

The main advantage of using Ethernet (instead of USB) is that you can run/develop software/scripts anywhere with Ethernet/IP access. With USB, you'd have to hook up a local machine. Also, TCP/IP sockets and Telnet connections are accessible from environments like Java, whereas USB is not (easily).

On the other hand, there seem to be more USB interfaces on the market than Ethernet interfaces.

Anyways, just my 2 cents, admittedly somewhat from a developer's perspective.
Good luck with your choice/purchase,
Jan

If you're clever enough to figure it out, you can do a USB passthrough over ethernet
with Linux. I've done that in the past.

Not recommending that, just noting the point :-)

Paul

--
Paul Amaranth, GCIH | Manchester MI, USA
Aurora Group of Michigan, LLC | Security, Systems & Software
paul@... | Unix/Linux - We don't do windows

On Mon, Mar 25, 2024 at 03:45 PM, Jan de Jongh wrote:

Anyways, just my 2 cents, admittedly somewhat from a developer's perspective.
Good luck with your choice/purchase,

I wholeheartedly agree. I have one NI USB and a real Agilent one, but I never use them. The NI software stack is the ultimate bloatware. GPIB to USB is very simple and totally OS-agnostic. Looks like a serial port. I Implemented the prologix command set in my adapter and it works reasonalbli well. I use the KE5FX software that I have adapted sligthly for use with my HP3852A and I also use Excel a lot, wrote some routines for my HP8905 audio analyser.