This is the old style open source community that I love something and that is often shadowed by big commercial open core projects pretending that they need to change their license because others are using they work...
Like in the good old time, such projects are often made by Linux users just desperate to have a good solution to their problems and happy to share it with others.
> The biggest take-away is that they’re expensive (>$100 second hand) and hard to configure when using Linux.
The original (or fake, who knows) from Agilent cost that much, yes, but there is AR488 [1], which can be had for pocket money. I have limited experience myself with it (I got the Agilent one), but it seemed to work just fine.
The Agilent one is a bit tricky as its firmware is uploaded when it powers up (is connected to USB) and changes then its ID. That however is well documented and with recent versions of linux-gpib should just work (it does for me).
Then there are GPIB host adaptors for ISA, PCI and PCIe busses. The latter might be expensive and working PC MB with ISA hard to find, but those with PCI are readily available on the secondary market for reasonable prices. I made good experience with one from CEC.
I work on old systems with big parallel buses, so a while ago I bought a big HP 16500C chassis with something like 128 logic analyzer channels.
It can handle a full 68000 bus no problem, but it’s cumbersome and unwieldy. (The X11 interface mentioned in the article is nifty though, I remember having the same issue with fonts.)
I love my Saleae and even the cheap USB logic analyzers work fine with Sigrok. But everything is either 8 or 16 channels.
I realize it’s a niche-of-a-niche use case, but is anyone making USB logic analyzers with 64+ channels at a hobbyist price point (or DIY)?
Nice overview. What should be mentioned is that HPGL and EPS (PCL maybe as well) are vector formats and you can use Inkscape to edit and convert them to SVG or PDF files. Vector formats provide great lossless scaling and other advantages.
greatgib ·7 days ago
This is the old style open source community that I love something and that is often shadowed by big commercial open core projects pretending that they need to change their license because others are using they work...
Like in the good old time, such projects are often made by Linux users just desperate to have a good solution to their problems and happy to share it with others.
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guenthert ·7 days ago
The original (or fake, who knows) from Agilent cost that much, yes, but there is AR488 [1], which can be had for pocket money. I have limited experience myself with it (I got the Agilent one), but it seemed to work just fine.
The Agilent one is a bit tricky as its firmware is uploaded when it powers up (is connected to USB) and changes then its ID. That however is well documented and with recent versions of linux-gpib should just work (it does for me).
Then there are GPIB host adaptors for ISA, PCI and PCIe busses. The latter might be expensive and working PC MB with ISA hard to find, but those with PCI are readily available on the secondary market for reasonable prices. I made good experience with one from CEC.
[1] https://github.com/Twilight-Logic/AR488
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contingencies ·7 days ago
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msarnoff ·7 days ago
It can handle a full 68000 bus no problem, but it’s cumbersome and unwieldy. (The X11 interface mentioned in the article is nifty though, I remember having the same issue with fonts.)
I love my Saleae and even the cheap USB logic analyzers work fine with Sigrok. But everything is either 8 or 16 channels.
I realize it’s a niche-of-a-niche use case, but is anyone making USB logic analyzers with 64+ channels at a hobbyist price point (or DIY)?
Show replies
buccal ·7 days ago
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