MAC / serial address of Agilent unit

[Neil.Pate]

Hello Experts, (and happy new year! )

Does anyone know how to read the MAC address or some other form of serial number from an Agilent semiconductor parameter analyzer? (it is an HP4155 to be precise).

I can browse the details if I use the front panel of the instrument, but cannot seem to figure out the GPIB / SCPI string to refer to it.

Any ideas?

Many thanks

nrp

[Phyt]

I went to agilent.com and typed '4155' in the search box at the top right, and scanned the files it returned, but I couldn't find a help string for MAC address and I didn't find anything else interesting.
'LST?' seems promising: if you can figure out how to create the files that the 'LST?' query will return, maybe you can "think outside the box" to uniquely identify your instruments.
Just an FYI: if your Agilent equipment has an HP tag on it, than it must have been manufactured in ~2000 or earlier: back when "teh Interweb" wasn't commonly used.  Therefore, I wouldn't expect there to be any sort of MAC address query available via SCPI, unless your instrument was still supported over the last few years and you have upgraded your firmware.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you will probably need to use commands (especially those that write to NVRAM) and queries in a way other than how they were intended to be used if you hope to remotely identify instruments uniquely.
Happy New Year... and Good Luck!

[Neil.Pate]

Thanks Phyt,

Yes, the kit is certainly pre 2000! Thanks for your tip on the LST? query, I will try it tomorrow.

[smercurio_fc]

If you ping the instrument the MAC address should be added to the arp table, so you can then follow up with the "arp -a" command to get the MAC address. This works on an Agilent PSA that we have here on the local subnet. (Note: this only works if the unit is on the local subnet.)

[Neil.Pate]

That is a good idea, but unfortunately, the unit is not connected via ethernet, only GPIB.

My ultimate goal is to read back the serial number, and I thought the MAC address may be one way to get a unique reference number. If you know how to read a serial number?

[smercurio_fc]

I'm not familiar with that instrument, so I don't know of a command to get the serial number. I went over to Agilent's web site, and took a quick look at the documentation
(http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/techSupport.jspx?pid=153734&pageMode=MN&cc=US&lc=eng).

After about 5 minutes I found that the command ":SYSTem:CONFig:ETHErnet?" will return the ethernet address. I did not find a command to return the serial number. Presumably you've already looked at the response of "*IDN?" and the information wasn't in there?


Message Edited by smercurio_fc on 01-04-2008 01:21 PM

[Neil.Pate]

The *IDN? query only returns the model number and a bit of info regarding the firmware payloads.

Your SYSTem:CONFig:ETHErnet? query looks very promising indeed, thanks a whole lot!

*****

[Neil.Pate]

Top suggestion!

The query you suggested works perfectly. Thanks for your help