Filter
Top Products
4-16
Programming
Monitoring the Instrument
Monitoring the Instrument
Almost every program that you write will need to monitor the Agilent 86120B
for its operating status. This includes querying execution or command errors
and determining whether or not measurements have been completed. Several
status registers and queues are provided to accomplish these tasks.
In this section, you’ll learn how to enable and read these registers. In addition
to the information in this section, you should review the commands docu-
mented in “Common Commands” on page 5-3 and “STATus Subsystem” on
page 5-74.
Status registers
The Agilent 86120B provides four registers which you can query to monitor
the instrument’s condition. These registers allow you to determine the follow-
ing items:
• Status of an operation
• Availability of the measured data
• Reliability of the measured data
All three registers are shown in the figure on the following page and have the
following uses:
Register
Definition
Status Byte Monitors the status of the other three registers.
Standard Event Status This is the standard IEEE 488.2 register. Con-
tains bits which indicate the status of the other
two registers.
OPERation Status Contains bits that report on the instrument’s
normal operation.
QUEStionable Status Contains bits that report on the condition of the
signal.