There are also some USB versions of the NI GPIB. These are driver compatible with the NI drivers for the other cards, you do not need any extra drivers or software changes. The USB-GPIB from NI are available in at least three versions so far. On Ebay, they seem to be selling at between $250 and $400. The first vesion was USB(1) and had moderate data transfer rates while the latest are USB2 and GPIB high speed. One advantage with all, is that you do not need the bulky GPIB cable, only a USB cable between the PC and the first instrument. The actual electronics are hidden in the GPIB connector and the whole thing powers from the USB bus.
A drawback with USB is that trigging/synking multiple hardware by GPIB via USB is probably less accurate than GPIB via the ISA or PCI bus. There are less common GPIB, like for the PXI and VIX busses, GPIB<=>RS232, GPIB<=>Ethernet. Lately thee are also GPIB fo PCI-Express. I have used many NI GPIG models over the last 15 years and never had any problems except that the PCI version could in some cases do an instant reboot of our Win2000 and XP boxes, if the GPIB software was badly configured. Jan F _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.