Agilent Technologies 6000 Series quick start Initializing the Interface and the Oscilloscope

2Getting Started

Initializing the Interface and the Oscilloscope

N O T E

To make sure the bus and all appropriate interfaces are in a known state, begin every program with an initialization statement. When using the Agilent VISA COM library, you can use the resource session object’s Clear method to clears the interface buffer:

Dim myMgr As VisaComLib.ResourceManager

Dim myScope As VisaComLib.FormattedIO488

Set myMgr = New VisaComLib.ResourceManager

Set myScope = New VisaComLib.FormattedIO488

'Open the connection to the oscilloscope. Get the VISA Address from the

'Agilent Connection Expert (installed with Agilent IO Libraries Suite). Set myScope.IO = myMgr.Open("<VISA Address>")

'Clear the interface buffer.

myScope.IO.Clear

When you are using GPIB, CLEAR also resets the oscilloscope’s parser. The parser is the program which reads in the instructions which you send it.

After clearing the interface, initialize the instrument to a preset state:

myScope.WriteString “*RST"

Information for Initializing the Instrument

The actual commands and syntax for initializing the instrument are discussed in the common commands section of the online Programmer’s Reference.

Refer to the Agilent IO Libraries Suite documentation for information on initializing the interface.

Using :AUToscale to Automate Oscilloscope Setup

The :AUToscale command performs a very useful function for unknown waveforms by setting up the vertical channel, time base, and trigger level of the instrument.

The syntax for the autoscale command is:

myScope.WriteString “:AUTOSCALE"

20 Agilent 6000 Series Oscilloscopes Programmer’s Quick Start Guide