Is USB a Genuine Alternative to GPIB and RS232 in Instruments?

[tautech]

But that has always been the catch 22 with GPIB. It has always been expensive, so it has had a limited market and so it is expensive.

A company like Siglent could choose to break this cycle - if they wanted to. If they priced their DSO's the same way they price this adapter, the DSO's would start at $10,000 and the argument would be that the high prices is needed  - so few would be sold that they need the huge profit margin just to make a living.

If some company brought out a really solid $20 full spec gpib to ethernet or USB  adapter, they would sell a big quality.

Quite so, they have quite a few apparently re-branded products and I strongly suspect this GPIB adapter is too although I've been too lazy to fully check this out.

I've made equipment change proposals that might reduce inventory of some of these accessories but they seem too focussed on the margins that can be made from accessories they didn't even develop.