[time-nuts] NI GPIB cards

Dennis Tillman dennis at ridesoft.com
Sat Mar 22 21:16:24 UTC 2008


H Dave,

Over the past 6 years I have bought 15 or more NI GPIB cards for use in PCs.
Nearly all of them have been bought on eBay. They have all worked fine.
National Instruments is the Rolls Royce of GPIB cards. Technical support and
driver support is first rate for all sorts of operating systems and
hardware, not just PCs. Their software includes good debugging tools and
manuals as well. There are more NI GPIB cards than any other brand on eBay.
They are the standard because they are simply the best and the easiest to
use.

There are three kinds of national Instruments GPIB adapters I have purchased
for the PC:
1) PCMCIA cards which come in two versions - newer and older. The older
version, which has an attractive blue schematic design on it, comes in two
variations. The PLUS variation has some advanced debugging capabilities but
these capabilities do not work on later versions of Windows. The newer
PCMCIA card is a rather dull light brown color. I typically pay about $175
to $225 for either version of PCMCIA cards. Both the newer and the older
ones work fine. The PLUS version is very rare and usually goes for over
$300. Be sure you get a PCMCIA card with a cable. The cable is the only
thing that seems to have changed between the older veresion and the newer
version. The cable can be pulled out of the older PCMCIA card because it is
not locked into the card. It has a different, wider, connector on it. The
newer PCMCIA card has a narrower cable on it with two tiny metal ears that
lock/unlock it to the card. In my mind this newer, locking cable is a
disadvantage because a good yank on the cable will pull the PCMCIA card
right out of your laptop, which makes the laptop very unhappy. With the old,
non-locking, cable if you yank on the cable it will separate from the PCMCIA
card but at least the card stays in the laptop and you can plug the cable
right back in.

2) The PCI card. These typically go for $150 on eBay. They are very good but
they are pricey. They are very common on eBay.

3) The ISA card. If your PC has an ISA slot then this is a real bargain.
They go for $25 on eBay. They are not as common on ebay as they once were
because people think they are have been replaced with the PCI versions. Look
for one that specifically says TNT PNP. These cards are Plug and Play and
they actually do work that way even though they were one of the first plug
and play cards to come out. They are bug free and they work fine. But they
come in several versions not all of which are Plug and Play. So be sure the
one you are bidding on says PNP on it. It is marked on the top of the card
in clear letters. TNT was their name for the chip they designed that did all
the GPIB interfacing.

I have used John Miles software with the NI PCMCIA GPIB adapters I have. It
works fine. There is no reason at all why it wouldn't work with any of the
NI GPIB adapters.

Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: die at dieconsulting.com

This group seems to be very GPIB savvy, so I have a question (vaguely
related to time and frequency) - is there a real difference between the half
sized current one large chip NI PCI-GPIB card and the older and larger
version with multiple chips that proceeded it ?

Which would you buy on Ebay ? any gotchas ?

This is of course among other things for use with John Miles software... and
HP and Racal counters and so forth...

Dave Emery N1PRE/AE





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