Agilent 8163A/B, 8164A/B & 8166A/B Mainframes, Fifth Edition 15
1Introduction to Programming
This chapter gives general information on how to control your instrument
remotely.
Descriptions for the actual command s for the instruments are given in the
following chapters. The information in these cha pters is specific to the
Agilent 8163A/B Lightwave Multimeter, Agilent 8164A/B L ightwave
Measurement System, and Agilent8166A/B Lightwave Multichannel
System and assumes that you are alr eady familiar with programming the
GPIB.
GPIB Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Setting the GPIB Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Returning the Instrument to Local Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Message Queues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
How the Input Queue Works. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
The Output Queue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
The Error Queue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Programming and Syntax Diagram Conventions. . . . . . . 23
Short Form and Long Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Command and Query Syntax. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Common Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Common Command Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Common Status Information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
The Status Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Status Registers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Status System for 8163A/B & 8164A/B. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Status System for 8166A/B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Annotations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Status Command Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Other Commands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41