[time-nuts] HP 5335A and using the HPIB for control

[Tom Holmes]

Perrier...

When you say programming is impossible, is that for lack of software or some other reason? 

I know of a utility from Keysight, called IOLibs, which would very manually let you send the appropriate commands to the counter, 1 or 2 at a time. Seems to me that it would only take a few commands to achieve what you need.

Warning: It is very large, like several tens of megabytes, but it offers some debugging tools as well, and lots of other features. It is really intended to serve as a go-between for software apps to facilitate talking to instruments, but I've found the ability to simply issue one line commands to instruments is very helpful for software development. Others may tell you that the National Instruments version is better, and in some respects it may be, but you can get this from Keysight for free. Last I heard, NI wanted $ for their version.

Tom Holmes, N8ZM

-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts <time-nuts-bounces at lists.febo.com> On Behalf Of Perry Sandeen via time-nuts
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2020 3:29 PM
To: time-nuts at lists.febo.com
Cc: Perry Sandeen <sandeenpa at yahoo.com>
Subject: [time-nuts] HP 5335A and using the HPIB for control

Learned Gentlemen,
While my TN stuff is packed for moving, I took a look at the HP 5335 spec sheet.
It appears that the gate time can be extended up to 10^7 seconds which would be very useful.
Talking with Bob Camp off list he said that any HPIB controls would involve some programming which is impossible to do. There is a labview home program for about $100 but that would also require some programing.

I could make extended gate times by making a 1PPS from my 10MHz reference and using it for the external gate start and counting it to get my desired stop time or perhaps there is the possibility of doing an internal mod to the counter which if it wouldn't be fairly simple, I'd rather not try.
Does anyone know of or have a program that I could put on a laptop (windoz) to control the gate time function?  For several reasons at this time  buying something newer like a HP53131 or equivalent to accomplish this is not feasible.
Thoughts?
Regards,
Perrier






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