Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Greetings from STAR on LI,

 

We have three subsystems using NI 1014 type GPIB interfaces.  All of these have been running for many years, and all are using 3.12 EPICS.

 

One subsystems uses a 1014D, dual port interface. It was brought to my attention that we have no spare for this system. I was looking into the problems that would arise should we have to swap this with  a 1014 mono port interface. We have several spare 1014, and our other option would be to buy another 1014D

 

From the code, and the device support, the startup scripts, and the state programs we use for  the two types of interfaces I see no real differences. The only difference is in the record fields where the dual port has two lines #L0 and #L1 in its database.  

 

Would a swap only involve a database change? What hardware considerations are involved?  I have had no previous experience (up to 24 hours ago) with GPIB, and have been perusing the manuals, and tech talk.  Normally I would just play, but we are now buttoned up with beam for this system, and wont have access for weeks.

 

Any answers, and suggestions are greatly appreciated. 

 

Thanks in Advance,

Bill Waggoner

STAR

BNL

 

PS Eventually.. next year?  we might upgrade this to EPICS 3.13 or 3.14.. but time constraints aren’t going to allow that for this run.