GPIB commands for calibration info?

[farsi]

Hi,

a number of instruments store calibration information internally.

Now, I saw this GPIB "hidden commands" for an Agilent 8960:

http://geoisfun.com/Agilent_8960/PL13_GPIB.html - apparently with a command "PL13"

What about reading calibration information from other instruments? Any ideas how/what is possible?

Thanks!

[Stray Electron]

  You can dump the operating system ROM and then use something like Edlin or List.com or even WordStar in a non-document mode to look for text strings. Then send the text strings over HP-IB and see what they do or what the error message is.  You also send them and also send random parameters such as 13 with them and again, see how the equipment responds.  Actually with any computer with a HP-IB interface you can automate the entire process including logging the results (if it returns anything via HP-IB).

    I did this once using an HP-85 to sequentially step though all possible codes in order figure out what codes generated what words and/or sounds on a HP-IB to speech convertor that I had no data for.  I had to listen to the audio output and if it said something, I hit a key to pause the process and to have it display the just sent code.  I then wrote the code down along with the sound or word that it made and then pressed the Continue key to tell it to continue.  It took about a half day to write the program and then run it and find all of the codes and generated words/sounds.

[z01z]

For Keithleys there is a GPIB command :CAL:PROT:DATA? that returns calibration constants.
For 2001 and 2002 TiN did some reverse engineering.
It also works for 2000.

[farsi]

Thanks for the feedback.

Ok - accessing the ROM would probably be a bad idea, since I am not the owner of the instruments, and the owner won't like that.

I tried the GPIB command but somehow I get "unterminated header". Anyway, this was just to get some new ideas, and I might get some old device on Ebay to explore that path a bit further.