Technical data

98 Agilent N8211A/N8212A Performance Upconverter Synthetic Instrument Module, 250 kHz to 20 / 40 GHz
4 Programming the Status Register System
Overview
• Standard Operation Condition Register bits (Tab le 6 on page 113)
• Data Questionable Condition Register bits (see Ta ble 7 on page 116)
• Data Questionable Power Condition Register bits (see Tabl e 8 on page 120)
• Data Questionable Frequency Condition Register bits (see Tab le 9 on page 122)
• Data Questionable Modulation Condition Register bits (see Ta ble 1 0 on page 125)
• Data Questionable Calibration Condition Register bit (see Ta b l e 11 on page 127)
During remote operation, you may need to monitor the status of the N8211A/N8212A for
error conditions or status changes. You can use the N8211A/N8212A’s status register
system to monitor error conditions, or condition changes, or both. In general, the error
queue is easier to use than the status registers, but the status registers provide some
additional information not found in the error queue. For more information on using the
N8211A/N8212A’s SCPI commands to query the N8211A/N8212A’s error queue, refer to
N8211A/N8212A’s SCPI command reference, to see if any errors have occurred.
The N8211A/N8212A’s status register system provides two major advantages:
• You can monitor the settling of the N8211A/N8212A using the settling bit of the
Standard Operation Status Group’s condition register.
• You can use the service request (SRQ) interrupt technique to avoid status polling,
therefore giving a speed advantage.
The N8211A/N8212A’s instrument status system provides complete SCPI compliant data
structures for reporting instrument status using the register model.
The SCPI register model of the status system has multiple registers that are arranged in a
hierarchical order. The lower-priority status registers propagate their data to the
higher-priority registers using summary bits. The Status Byte Register is at the top of the
hierarchy and contains the status information for lower level registers. The lower level
registers monitor specific events or conditions.
The lower level status registers are grouped according to their functionality. For example,
the Data Questionable Frequency Status Group consists of five registers. This chapter may
refer to a group as a register so that the cumbersome longer description is avoided. For
example, the Standard Operation Status Group’s Condition Register can be referred to as
the Standard Operation Status register. Refer to “Status Groups" on page 110 for more
information.
The status register systems use IEEE 488.2 commands (those beginning with *) to access
the higher-level summary registers (refer to the SCPI Reference at the back of this book).
Access Lower-level registers by using STATus commands.