The main laptop I've been using for test equipment is an Panasonic CF-53 Toughbook I picked up a couple of years ago. It came as a lot with a CF-31 as well which I never did much with since the CF-53 has a larger screen. A number of recent circumstances had me thinking about having both laptops running the test equipment related software would be useful along with the smaller footprint of the CF-31 for portability, so I decided to get it up and running last weekend.
In theory, this should've meant copying the directories of software and manuals over from the CF-53 Toughbook and running the installers, all pretty straightforward. In practice, it turns out that Windows 10 had blown up and de-activated itself, so I ended up having to do battle with Windows 10 first.
I got Windows 10 sorted out and had a properly working system again. Then I ran the installers and that was another total mess with running into missing supporting .NET packages and having to go multiple rounds with several installers due to various error messages but I eventually got everything loaded - which is not confidence inspiring to anyone that's used computers long enough to know how painful broken installs are. This mandated doing some testing to see if everything works or if there was any obvious brokenness that needed to be dealt with so the laptop went downstairs and I spent an evening listening to music and going through software package one by one.
The relative size of each laptop's footprints can be seen in this picture. The QuantAsylum QA403 package worked fine but the GUI is cramped on the 1024x768 display. Remember how I ended up getting an outboard powered USB hub because the QA403 was bottoming out on the USB bus power? This actually worked out well because the QA403, an external mouse, and Agilent U82357A USB-HPIB adapter are all connected to it so swapping between laptops means only moving the power adapter and one USB cable between them.
Keysight's software is where I had the bulk of the installation problems. The U1461A insulation tester was close at hand so I grabbed that to test Keysight Meter Logger figuring that this would be a fairly strenuous test since it can double as a DMM plus it does have some incompatibilities within the Keysight product line, eg. doesn't work with the U1115A remote logging display. The insulation tester checked out fine in both modes though.
I did take the opportunity to begin wiring the HPIB on a couple of pieces of equipment to make better use of the U82357A than I had been. I hooked up the HP 3457A DMM and 8903B audio analyzer to start with.
Getting up and running with the 3457A was pretty straightforward and it responds to commands and sends results back. The 8903B was another matter. Sending commands and seeing the machine itself respond is no problem. In the picture above, I sent a 21.1SP from the laptop and the 8903B displayed its HPIB address. Sending an M1 returns it to voltage measurement. Getting results back form the 8903B is where the problems are. Sending an RR or RL to read the values off the left or right displays on the 8903B time out waiting for a response from it and it appears to be factory default with the 28 address and nothing set for talk or listen only. It looks like I'm far from the only person to run into difficulties with this so it'll need more attention later but it's not exactly a high priority since the QA403's automation all works on both laptops. I'm not sure if I ever played around with remote control on the 8903B from the other laptop either.
By then with all the messing around with the 8903B it was getting late and I had to call it a night. Still outstanding to test are the software defined radio and Keysight U1733C LCR meter. The software for both of those had problems installing as well.
