On 8/16/2012 11:37 AM, Ray Mitchell wrote: > GPIB also had a ridiculously short cable length (and expensive to boot).
That's true and it seemed we always needed one more cable than we could lay our hands on when my group was using GPIB aka IEEE 488 aka HP-IB extensively (into the early 1980s). Fortunately, there was always somebody down the hall to borrow one from. On the other hand, why beat on a dead horse? HP-IB was developed by HP back in the 1960s-1970s to interconnect its growing line of instrumentation products with digital interfaces. IEEE got into the act in the 1970s. The HP-IB bus was implemented in TTL. Given that, I think the usable cable lengths were pretty impressive. We took a ton of data on HP 98xx desktop computers bussed to HP instruments; processed and plotted results to HP plotters. (Anyone remember those funky magnetic program cards? I wish I had kept one for a souvenir. Indeed, I wish I had kept one of every kind of data storage medium I used in my professional lifetime.) This technology wasn't my choice---I had joined the group with extensive experience in minicompter/NIM-bin/CAMAC technologies---but taking the HP approach meant the engineers could do their own integration. At least two students won PhDs from their home universities with research based in part on the data they gathered in our group. Sic transit gloria mundi. Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
