exchanging information with TDS 684C oscilloscope

I have a TDS 684C that I'd like restart using. Before start looking for few floppy disks and a reader, I was wondering is any of the other periferic present on the back of the scope (RS-232-centronics-[GPIB]) could be used to exchange with a PC snapshots and configurations as effectively as through the floppy. There are converters from any of those standards to the USB, but I don't know if any of them has some plug and play capability, or if the drivers for latest versions of OS  (Windows 10) can be retrieved anywhere. Did anyone played with these interfaces and can share his/her opinion? Thanks 

Hi,

According to the manual page 1-2, the TDS 600Cs can only be programmed through the GPIB port, but they can use the other 2 ports to download screenshots.

So as long as you're okay with pressing the front panel Hardcopy button, a simple RS-232 adapter should work well. Otherwise you will need the more expensive GPIB to USB converter.

Hello Alberto,

Actually your question applies to the complete serie of TDS500/600/700/C/D where myself has been using few TDSxxx/C/D's as well as repairing few for a few of my customers in France (University laboratory) and Germany (private laboratory).

My advice is to purchase a National Instruments GPIB-USB interface which works very good wether on reading, writing, bandwidth, Python and others. Myself has chosen to use MacOS for many decades as I'm using Tektronix for many decades, the GPIB-USB from NI works wonderful with my MacBook Air even with recent OS (i.e. Mojave).

There are few exception like if you need to access the EEPROM of the acquisition board (sensitive) where only the floppy disk will work but that is tricky and dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. Otherwise whatever topic to interface a compute with the TDS500/700 including your TDS600 will work quick, safe and easy with a GPIB-USB interface.

As for the Console port and/or RS232 use, it is really more to troubleshoot if failure of the oscilloscope as opposed to read/write data between these oscilloscopes and any computer (Windows, MacOS and Lunix).

Best regards, Albert

Thanks a lot Albert, your input is highly appreciated. I am not planning to modify the acquisition board EEPROM but rather doing some standard setting-save/retrieve and snapshot collection that I would have done through the floppy, so using the GPIB-USB converter is what I need. Do I need to install any SW on the PC to communicate with the oscilloscope? I assume that if I want to "control" the oscilloscope operations sequence through GPIB commands (which is something that presently goes behind my interested) I would need the NI SW installed, but what if I simply want to transfer to the PC the snapshots collected via the oscilloscope? Thanks
 

Actually you do not need to buy any SW from NI. Just download then install their Visa drivers free software so when you connect their GPIB-USB then your computer will communicate both ways with your TDS. It is free, works on many platforms (as mentioned I've done on MacOS) then you'll decide what you want to use as a high level software. For example once the drivers are installed, you can then use your Python script or Unix programs in C or just stay low level through the basic NI suite. It all depends how you like to program, to interface but what is crystal clear, these 1990's old TDSxxx oscilloscope do interface very well with NI even though modern computers OS.

I've not use this free tool but it seems to work very good for Windows, please check this man provides GPIB tool kit which could satisfy your need. You might check as well my Github repository TDS repair GPIB tools which is more oriented for repair and troubleshoot the serie of these TDS oscilloscopes.