GPIB / Serial driver substitution

[alecjcook]

Hi. I am trying to control my first legacy instrument using LabVIEW. it is a Tektronix TDS 320 (scope). I am talking to it via Serial (not GPIB). The only drivers I can find for it for LabVIEW are GPIB. Would it be possible to port these drivers from GPIB to Serial, or would I need to write my own drivers.

Cheers, Alec

[GerdW · Accepted solution]

Hi Alec,

you should replace all GPIB-calls with VISA-functions.

Then it's rather easy to select the correct bus for communication, as VISA supports both of them (and some more)...

[Coq_Rouge]

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@GerdW wrote:

Hi Alec,

you should replace all GPIB-calls with VISA-functions.

Then it's rather easy to select the correct bus for communication, as VISA supports both of them (and some more)...

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I would say you can reuse about 95% of the driver code. But it is some important differences between how the communication is done regarding RS232 and GPIB. The "TKTDS 3xx Application Example.vi" will not work by only porting visa setup from from GPIB RS232. The diffrerence is explained in the programmer manual. Here is a source. http://webphysics.davidson.edu/faculty/dmb/py310/tds320.programmer.manual.pdf