GPIB - PCI GPIB board

Previous post was about a home made and cheap solution to provide instrument control via GPIB.

This time a less cheaper alternative but still in budget.

Since the prices of a proper PCI GPIB board or a PCMIA version are on high values I searched for older cards, you have plenty of less expensive ones but they are for older PCI or even ISA interfaces, I managed to get one National Instruments PCI 32 GPIB board for the sum of 30 EUR (inc shipping) but I didn't had the computer for it! (currently only have the laptop with me), again on the used marked got an HP8200 Elite PC with OK specs for 62 Eur delivered. The total of my setup is then 92 Eur, that is lower value than what people ask for a PCMCIA and some PCI GPIB cards, adding to the lower value I have now a new PC for the lab.

I wanted a small form computer due to space limitation, the drawback is; it does not have full height slots, so, had to add and extension cable from the slot to the card drill a bit on the back panel and place the board zip tied inside. Since the PC is not suppose to move around, this setup will work.

Here's the result:

 Not the prettiest of the hacks but very few metal tools available currently so all mostly done with pliers.

The board in place horizontally still without the PCI cable extension attached.

 The PCI extension cable:

Since I use Linux, had to load the driver and after some "fighting" manage to get everything working.
The "lspci" confirming the card is in place.

 

And the driver:
       gpib_common            45056  2 tnt4882,nec7210

and loading messages:

[   13.495862] gpib_common: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[   13.505196] gpib_common: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
[   13.505484] Linux-GPIB 4.3.0 Driver
[   13.506402] gpib: registered ni_isa interface
[   13.506403] gpib: registered ni_isa_accel interface
[   13.506403] gpib: registered ni_nat4882_isa interface
[   13.506404] gpib: registered ni_nat4882_isa_accel interface
[   13.506405] gpib: registered ni_nec_isa interface
[   13.506405] gpib: registered ni_nec_isa_accel interface
[   13.506405] gpib: registered ni_pci interface
[   13.506406] gpib: registered ni_pci_accel interface


Using this card, already manage to program some simple code for all of my instruments, except the EIP 371 frequency counter that was not tested yet.

In the future I plan to create some posts with code examples for the following instruments:

Marconi 6960A Power meter
HP 3478A Multimeter
HP 5316B Frequency meter
ICS 4896 GPIB to quad Serial "converter" (this is not a serial do GPIB converter so can't be used to control GPIB instruments)
HP/Agilent 6621A power supply
R&S NRVS power meter


Have a nice day!