[time-nuts] TimeLab and HP53132A

[John Miles]

> >Are you using
> > the talk-only option, or the Acquire->HP 53131... option that I just
> added
> > recently?
> R: yes but not work. No input data in monitor mode.

On which driver?  Talk-only, or the instrument-specific one?

When I was working on the last set of drivers, I found talk-only support to
be somewhat less reliable on the 53132A than on the SR620 and some other
counters.  You need to turn on the "Print" mode to get anything at all out
of the port in talk-only mode.  On a couple of occasions, I found that if I
turned printing on without having a GPIB adapter connected and listening at
the time, it locked up the port until the next power cycle.  So it's
probably better to use the 'native' addressable driver for the HP
53131A/53132A/53181A counters. 

If your 53132A has a serial port you can also monitor outgoing data through
it, via the talk-only driver.  

> > When you use the 'Monitor' button in the acquisition dialog, do you see
> new
> > data coming across at one line per second, or one line every two
seconds?
> R: when in standard HP53132A mode in monitoring mode I have an incoming
> data
> line every second as have to be.

But it misses every other data point after you start the acquisition?
That's strange -- if you can get both the talk-only driver and the native
531xA driver working, I'd be curious to hear if the same thing happens in
both cases.  I don't immediately see how it could correctly receive one line
per second in 'Monitor' mode while missing every other sample during
acquisition, so it would be good to know which driver you're using.

-- john