Steven Casagrande posted an update on his open source hardware GPIB USB adapter:
After many days, I just finished off firmware version 5 for my adapter. This is probably my biggest update yet. A lot of people asked for compatibility with the Prologix commands so that’s what I focused on. Here is an overview of the new firmware:
- Nearly all Prologix command set support. The adapter should now work with some pre-existing software tools and examples on the internet that were originally intended. Some will require a few changes for baud rate and flow control settings
- Improved termination character handling
- SRQ support (but no parallel polling, only serial)
- Improved stability
- Device mode (first version so there may be fixes in the future)
- Most settings can be stored in EEPROM
- Basic FIFO buffer for data sent from the PC
Via the forum.
Progress on Prologix compatibility – sweet! We need some testing with the KE5FX GPIB Tool Kit by John Miles found here:
http://www.ke5fx.com/
Regards, David
So it works and it doesn’t at the same time. It found that his software requires the use of the RTS/CTS hardware control lines by default. In addition, it is set to use a different baudrate.
Both problems can be fixed by recompiling his software. In addition, the baudrate problem can be fixed by playing with a registry key used by the FTDI driver to map the baudrates. I think you can also make an entry in a config file for the toolkit for the baudrate part. I haven’t tried that one though.
The biggest though is the RTS/CTS requirement. I’ve been in contact with John about the issue and I recommended he add an option to not use those control lines.
Sweet! I might see if I can get one of these now that there’s some progress on device mode.