If you happened to create a network controller, but you didn’t know what type of network controller you should build, then this article can shed some light on you…

For those of you that always involving in the projects, you’ll need these test equipment: Oscilloscopes, power supplies, signal generators and so on are often being used in manufacturing or electronic fields. The work will be even more pleasure with the help of GPIB!

General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) or also known as IEEE-488.2 bus or HO-IB bus, is a standard for instrumentation communication and control for instruments. Hewlett-Packard was the company that designed the GPIB in 1965, where it named “Hewlett-Packard Interface Bus (HP-IB)” in the beginning. The main purpose of this component is to connect their line of programmable instruments to their computers.

Due to its high transfer rates, which can reach 1Mbytes per second, this HP-IB is gaining its popularity instantly all across the worldwide. Then, it was accepted as IEEE Standard 488-1975 and evolved to ANSI/IEEE Standard 488.1-1987.

Nowadays, the GPIB has already replaced the HP-IB. For this project, the main heart of the controller is going to be the GPIB driver, where it implements a fully compliant GPIB bus controller in software. It can be done by using the eZ80F91′s external GPIO lines.