amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu (Allen J Michielsen) (04/25/91)
This may sound a bit like a ad, but bear with me....
IOtech, Inc. 25971 Cannon Road, Cleveland Ohio 44146 USA
voice 216-439-4091 fax 216-439-4093 telex 6502820864
Is a mfg of several/many special custom IEEE 488.2 & SCPI devices for a
wides range of platforms (pc's, mac's, sun & dec workstations {unix & vms}, and
others). They make a bunch of stuff better and different than other similiar
mfg's. ANyway, they are currently doing a roadshow that is rather a soft sales
pitch but much more importantly, it is a really excellent educational/learning
seminar on the functioning and programming of IEEE systems/devices.
Every attendee or so, get's a IEEE bus analyzer to use during the hands on
seminar, and intro to the major functions of it. The bus logic is decoded,
explained, and device (master/slave) interactions are eavesdropped on and
watched, recorded, and explained in simple terms. If you are interested in
using or learning about the IEEE 488 bus in general amd don't have any or much
experience with it, this would be a excellent short learning tool. There are
hand out high quality notes and references, which will be of use with whatever
mfg of ieee 488 equipment is selected. I highly recommend the course as a
intro learning/ educational tool for EVERYONE.
The IEEE 488.1 standard is the original, IEEE 488.2 is the new standard which
has added many new (powerfull) features to the standard. SCPI (skippy) is the
latest (well...) add-on, sortof. SCPI is a (sortof) device/network independent
'standard' (I think it's still in the ieee rules committee) that is intended
to create a standard uniform set of commands and command structure for a wide
variety of devices. It is intended that if you buy a iee 488.2 SCPI device,
you can use software written for it on ANY other iee 488.2 SCPI device that
has the same features (such as 2 DVM's that have a 100 mV DC scale) or similiar
features (such as 2 DVM's that 1 has a 100 mV DC scale and the other a 250 mV
DC scale).
I just returned from it, and can say that it was a BETTER seminar than many I
have seen that have cost upwards of $750 for. The 'sales' end of it is very
low key, basically a full line catalog, demo of selected items available on
site, and where applicable a comparison or indication of models in component
explainations. Several people came with existing hardware application problems
and their engineer discussed them, and made recommendations. The engineer also
went out of his way to present alternative solutions that did NOT utilize ANY
of their own equipment. (However, in every case, the alternative was cheaper,
and of lower performance....).
al
p.s. I have neither any connection with the company or even OWN any of their
equipment (currently). I just attended this, and was impressed with the amount
and quality of technical info and hands on application available in this free
environment....
--
Al. Michielsen, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Syracuse University
InterNet: amichiel@rodan.acs.syr.edu amichiel@sunrise.acs.syr.edu
Bitnet: AMICHIEL@SUNRISE