[time-nuts] Can one update firmware of Stanford Research Systems SR620 time interval counter?

[Dr. David Kirkby (Kirkby Microwave Ltd)]

I'm just in the process of trying to look at writing some GPIB
software for my SR620, which is a fairly new arrival. I paid $950 for
it, which I think was pretty good, considering it has the high
stability time base.

Anyway, the first thing after setting the GPIB address to something
that did not clash with other equipment I had, was to send it the
usual *IDN? to hopefully get some response from it. Sure enough, it
did respond with:

drkirkby at buzzard:~/SR620-1/src$ ./tic  15
StanfordResearchSystems,SR620,03154,1.48
e

I was a bit surprised by the letter "e" on another line, but anyway,
that is what it did. According to the manual,

"This string is in the format:
StanfordResearchSystems, SR620, serial number,
version number. Where "serial number" is the five
digit serial number of the particular unit, and
"version number" is the 3 digit firmware version
number."

So it looks like I have firmware 1.48.

Does anyone know the latest firmware, whether it is possible to update
the firmware, and if so how? Also, does anyone have a lit of the
changes between firmware releases? If there are some major bugs fixed,
I'd be more keen to update, but if the changes are quite minor, I am
less inclined to bother.


Dave