Agilent Technologies 667xA, 665xA General Information, About this Guide, Documentation Summary

1

General Information

About this Guide

This guide provides remote programming information for the following series of GPIB programmable power supplies:

•AGILENT Series 664xA, 665xA, 667xA, 668xA, and 669xA

You will find the following information in the rest of this guide:

Chapter 2	Introduction to SCPI messages structure, syntax, and data formats. Examples of SCPI programs.
Chapter 3	Dictionary of SCPI commands. Table of programming parameters.
Chapter 4	Description of the status registers.
Chapter 5	Error messages.
Appendix A	SCPI conformance information.
Appendix B	Use of the alternate Compatibility programming language.

Documentation Summary

User’s Guide

The Operating Guide, shipped with the power supply, has information helpful to programming the power supply and explains the SCPI commands used for remote calibration. Sample calibration and verification programs are included.

External Documents

SCPI References

The following documents will assist you with programming in SCPI:

•Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments Volume 1, Syntax and Style

•Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments Volume 2, Command References

•Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments Volume 3, Data Interchange Format

•Standard Commands for Programmable Instruments Volume 4, Instrument Classes

To obtain a copy of the above documents, contact: Fred Bode, Executive Director, SCPI Consortium, 8380 Hercules Drive, Suite P3, Ls Mesa, CA 91942, USA

GPIB References

The most important GPIB documents are your controller programming manuals - Agilent BASIC, GPIB Command Library for MS DOS, etc. Refer to these for all non-SCPI commands (for example: Local Lockout).

The following are two formal documents concerning the GPIB interface:

aANSI/IEEE Std. 488.1-1987 IEEE Standard Digital Interface for Programmable Instrumentation. Defines the technical details of the GPIB interface. While much of the information is beyond the need of most programmers, it can serve to clarify terms used in this guide and in related documents.

aANSI/IEEE Std. 488.2-1987 IEEE Standard Codes, Formats, Protocols, and Common Commands. Recommended as a reference only if you intend to do fairly sophisticated programming. Helpful for finding precise definitions of certain types of SCPI message formats, data types, or common commands.

The previous two documents are available from the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers), 345 East 47th Street, New York, NY 10017, USA. The WEB address is www.ieee.org.

Introduction 7