HP 83620A, 24A, 22A manual Reading Instrument Errors, Repeat

Reading Instrument Errors

Although discrete parameters values look like command keywords, do not confuse the two. In particular, be sure to use colons and spaces properly. Use a colon to separate command mnemonics from each other. Use a space to separate parameters from command mnemonics.

Boolean Parameters. Boolean parameters represent a single binary condition that is either true or false. There are only four possible values for a Boolean parameter.

Examples of Boolean parameters:

ON Boolean TRUE, upper/lower case allowed

OFF Boolean FALSE, upper/lower case allowed

1Boolean TRUE

0Boolean FALSE

Examples of Boolean parameters in commands:

100 OUTPUT OSource;":FM:STATe On"

110 OUTPUT OSource;":AM:STATe 1"

When debugging a program, you may want to know if an instrument error has occurred. Some instruments can display error messages on their front panels. If your instrument cannot do this, you can put the following code segment in your program to read and display error messages.

10 !

20! T h e r e s t o f y o u r

30! v a r i a b l e d e c l a r a t i o n s

40 !

50 DIM Err_msg$[75]

60 INTEGER Err-num

70 !

80 ! Part of your program 9 0 ! t h a t g e n e r a t e s e r r o r s

100!

110!

200 REPEAT

210OUTPUT QBox;":SYST:ERR?"

220! q u e r y i n s t r u m e n t e r r o r

230 ENTER OBox;Err-num,Err-msg$

240 ! Read error #, message

250 PRINT Err-num,Err-msg$

260 ! P r i n t e r r o r m e s s a g e

270UNTIL Err-num = 0

28 0 ! R e p e a t u n t i l n o e r r o r s

290!

3 0 0 ! T h e r e s t o f y o u r p r o g r a m

310!

Getting Started Programming 1-75