Keithley 708B Reference Manual page 54

Models 707B and 708B Switching Matrix Reference Manual
Communicate with instruments
The GPIB driver software you installed installs a interactive dumb terminal program that allows you to
send commands to the instrument. They directly call the GPIB driver support libraries.
For the KPCI-488LPA and KUSB-488B GPIB controller from Keithley Instruments, the configuration
utility is called the KI-488 Diagnostic Tool. It is available from the Windows Start menu at Keithley
Instruments > KI-488 > KI-488 Diagnostic Tool.
For the KUSB-488A GPIB controller from Keithley Instruments, the configuration utility is called
TrTest. It is available from the Windows Start Menu at Keithley Instruments > GPIB-488-CEC >
TrTest.
For National Instruments GPIB controllers, you can use NI-MAX. Start NI-MAX. If your hardware is
installed correctly, you should see the controller in the GPIB section of the tree control on the left side.
Select it and right-click to see an option to communicate with the instrument.
If you want to use the GPIB controller with instrument driver (such as VXIPnP or IVI) or high-level
software, you must also install I/O software, which installs the VISA layer. See
Keithley I/O Layer
Terminator
When receiving data over the GPIB, the instrument terminates on any line feed character or any data
byte with EOI asserted (line feed with EOI asserted is also valid). When sending data through the
GPIB drivers, it is not necessary to append a line feed character to all outgoing messages. The EOI
line is asserted with the last character sent.
However, if you want your program to communicate with all I/O buses on the instrument (GPIB, USB,
LAN (VXI-11 and raw socket)), it is good practice to add a line feed to the end of the outgoing
command. Use VISA and the same program will work with all the I/O buses by just changing the
resource string in the VISA Open method.
GPIB reference
Configure the GPIB controllers
Each instrument on a GPIB bus needs a unique address from a range of 0 to 30. Generally, the GPIB
host controller is on address 0. However, there are GPIB controllers that adopt the address of 21. To
be safe, do not configure any of the instruments for 21 or 0.
If you do need to change the host controller address, consult the controller documentation.
For the KPCI-488LPA and KUSB-488B GPIB controller from Keithley Instruments, the configuration
utility is called the KI-488 Diagnostic Tool. It is available from the Windows Start menu at Keithley
Instruments > KI-488 > KI-488 Diagnostic Tool.
707B-901-01 Rev. A / August 2010
(on page 2-61).
NOTE
Section 2: General operation
How to install the
2-35