The General Purpose Interface Bus is generally used to attach test equipment or scientific instruments to a personal computer. It is sometimes called the IEEE-488.2 bus.
How it Works
In general, a GPIB card must be installed into a PCI, ISA, SCSI or even PCMCIA slot on a personal computer. A cable is used to connect the card to whatever instrument will be interfaced with the computer.
Some GPIB Devices
- Power Supplies
- Amino Acid Analyzers
- Function Generators
- Tensile Testers
History
Its architecture is based on the Hewlett Packard Interface Bus, which was developed in 1965. The HP-IB was capable of transmitting data at up to one megabyte per second. Its relatively extreme speed during that period of time made it very popular.
Manufacturers
Agilent Technologies and National Instruments currently make a wide variety of GPIB products.
Specifications
It uses an 8 bit data bus which makes use of five control and three handshake signals.
Pinout
1 DIO1 13 DIO5
2 DIO2 14 DIO6
3 DIO3 15 DIO7
4 DIO4 16 DIO8
5 EOI 17 REN
6 DAV 18 GND
7 NRFC 19 GND
8 NDAC 20 GND
9 IFC 21 GND
10 SRQ 22 GND
11 ATN 23 GND
12 SHIELD 24 GND
Web Reference
http://www.weizmann.ac.il/physics/services/edaq/GPIB.html