KEPCO BOP-MG, Operator'S Manual

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BOP HIPWR 031912
3-51
Although the software drivers supplied by Kepco are VISA compliant, they also require the
installation of the proper VISA driver from your GPIB card supplier. Many vendors supply this
software with the hardware; National Instruments (http://www.natinst.com) has the driver for
their cards available on the internet at a file transfer site (ftp://ftp.natinst.com — find the folder
for support and VISA drivers).
3.5.6 RS232-C OPERATION
The BOP may be operated via an RS232-C terminal, or from a PC using a terminal emulation
program. The default settings are as follows:
• Baud rate: OFF
• Parity: None
• Data Bits 8
• Stop Bits 1
• Prompt DISABLE
• XON/XOFF ENABLE
To change baud rate, or select prompt, echo or XON/XOFF, refer to PAR. 3.5.3.2 and Table 3-
16.
3.5.6.1 SERIAL INTERFACE
The serial interface behaves like the GPIB interface in that the command is parsed after receiv-
ing a control character of either a Line Feed or Carriage Return. The serial interface supports six
special control characters. The six special control characters are:
Escape (1B
H
) Causes the input buffer to be cleared. This character is used to ensure
that the buffer is empty when the host powers on since it is possible
that the BOP was previously powered on and received some charac-
ters prior to the initialization of the host computer.
Backspace (08
H
) Causes the last character in the input buffer to be removed from the
input buffer queue.
Carriage Return (0D
H
) Causes the input buffer to be parsed by the BOP.
Line Feed (0A
H
) Causes the input buffer to be parsed by the BOP.
3.5.6.2 RS 232 IMPLEMENTATION
The following paragraphs are provided to help the user understand how the RS 232 serial inter-
face is implemented in the BOP. Since the RS 232 protocol does not use a parity bit, The
XON/XOFF method of communication is selected as the default to ensure “handshake” control
of serial communication.
The echo mode is an optional method used to ensure reliable communication between the com-
mand originator (computer) and the BOP power supply, thus avoiding a more complex “hand-
shake” protocol. When the BOP is in the RS 232 echo mode it returns all data sent to the host
controller.