User Manual 2460 Series
Racal Instruments
2003
Programming The 2461 Module 4-5
Status and Error
Reporting
Status and error reporting commands fall within the general
command set so these can be accessed at any time. Status,
and set up of the status system, is done by the STATUS
subsystem while error messages are retrieved by the
SYSTem:ERRor? Command. Further status is controlled and
reported back by the IEEE 488.2 commands *ESR? , *ESE ,
*SRE and *STB?
System Timeout
In SCPI protocol, a query command generates a response
which must be read back. In some circumstances a query
command will fail and no response will be available. If this is
the case, an attempt to read back the information queried can
cause the system to appear to ‘hang’. This is especially true
of measurement type instruments such as UCTs where no
signal means that a measurement cannot take place when the
MEAS? Or READ? Is sent. To overcome this problem, the
2461 implements the SCPI command SYSTem:TIMeout
command where the 2461 imposes a timeout value on certain
query commands. Should an application not respond within
the timeout value, the 2461 will generate a timeout error and
produce an extremely large result to avoid a hang-up
situation.
Setting the timeout value to zero disables the timeout
function.
Note that the timeout value applies to all 2461 query
commands including application commands.
Other timeout mechanisms may exist in the system controller
and associated software and if the operator wishes to use the
timeout facility of the 2461 then these timeouts must not pre-
empt the 2461 timeout.
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