National Instruments SB-GPIB, Getting Started

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© National Instruments Corporation 1-1 SB-GPIB/TNT for Solaris
1
Introduction
This chapter explains how to use this manual, lists what you need to get
started, and briefly describes the SB-GPIB/TNT and NI-488.2 for Solaris.
What You Need to Get Started
❑
Solaris version 2.5.1 or higher installed on your Sun SPARC system.
❑
One of the following boards:
– SB-GPIB
– SB-GPIB/TNT
❑
NI-488.2 for Solaris and SB-GPIB/TNT, Version 2.x CD
❑
Super-user privilege
❑
One of the following shielded GPIB cables, which you can purchase
from National Instruments:
– Type X1 single-shielded cables (1, 2, or 4 m)
– Type X2 double-shielded cables (1, 2, or 4 m)
Caution To meet FCC emission limits for this device, you must use a shielded
(Type X1 or X2) GPIB cable. Operating this equipment with a non-shielded cable
may interfere with radio and television reception.
GPIB Hardware Overview
The SB-GPIB/TNT board, equipped with a TNT4882C ASIC, is
compatible with all revisions of the IEEE 488 standard, including
ANSI/IEEE Standard 488.2-1987. The TNT4882C chip combines the
circuitry of the NAT4882 ASIC, the Turbo488 performance-enhancing
ASIC, and GPIB transceivers to create a single-chip IEEE 488.2
Talker/Listener/Controller interface. The TNT4882C also implements
the HS488 high-speed protocol, which increases the maximum data
transfer rate of devices up to 3.4 Mbytes/s when using the SBus direct
virtual memory access (DMVA) transfers.