IEEE 488: not dead yet? Nothing good lasts forever, but IEEE 488's slow decline is making the venerable instrument-interface standard seem immortal. (design feature).

EDN, June, 2003 by Strassberg, Dan

LIKE THE CHARACTER in the famous Monty Python sketch, IEEE 488 is not dead yet. The decades-old standard's longevity is in question, however, and you probably have good reason to care about its fight for life. Whether you design test-and-measurement instruments, develop or implement systems that incorporate test-and-measurement products that others design, or simply use such products in your lab or test facility, the methods that instruments use to communicate with each other and with host computers matter a lot. The communications medium's physical implementation, protocol, and instrument-specific command sets strongly influence instruments' and systems' speed and cost and the time EEs must spend programming and debugging test applications.

In 1977, the...

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