24 
 
Poll Configure command (PPC) followed by a Parallel Poll Enable command (PPE). The bits in 
the PPE command are shown below: 
bit 5 =  1   Parallel poll enable 
 sense of the response bit; 0 = low, 1 = high 
bit 2 =  ?   
bit 1 =  ?   bit position of the response 
Example.  To return the RQS bit (bit 6 of the Status Byte Register) as a 1 when true and a 0 when false 
in bit position 1 in response to a parallel poll operation send the following commands 
*PRE 64
<pmt>, then PPC followed by 69H (PPE) 
The parallel poll response from the instrument will then be 00H if RQS is 0 and 01H if RQS 
is 1. 
During parallel poll response the DIO interface lines are resistively terminated (passive 
termination). This allows multiple devices to share the same response bit position in either wired-
AND or wired-OR configuration, see IEEE 488.1 for more information. 
Status Reporting 
A separate error and status model is maintained for each interface instance; an interface instance 
is defined as a potential connection. USB, RS232 and GPIB are inherently single connections so 
represent one interface instance each.  LAN, however, allows for multiple simultaneous 
connections and therefore represents multiple interface instances.  Two interface instances are 
allocated to the two TCP socket interfaces and one more is allocated to the Web page interface.  
Having a separate model for each interface instance ensures that data does not get lost as many 
commands e.g. ‘*ESR?’ clear the contents on read. 
Error status is maintained using a set of registers; these are described in the following 
paragraphs and shown on the Status Model at the end of this section. 
Standard Event Status and Standard Event Status Enable Registers  
These two registers are implemented as required by the IEEE Std. 488.2. 
Any bits set in the Standard Event Status Register which correspond to bits set in the Standard 
Event Status Enable Register will cause the ESB bit to be set in the Status Byte Register. 
The Standard Event Status Register is read and cleared by the *ESR? command. The Standard 
Event Status Enable register is set by the *ESE <nrf> command and read by the *ESE? 
command. 
It is a bit field where each bit has the following significance. 
Bit 7:  Power On. Set when power is first applied to the instrument. 
Bit 6:  User Request (Not used). 
Bit 5:  Command Error. Set when a syntax type error is detected in a command from the bus. 
The parser is reset and parsing continues at the next byte in the input stream 
Bit 4:  Execution Error. Set when an error is encountered while attempting to execute a 
completely parsed command. The appropriate error number will be reported in the 
Execution Error Register, see Error Messages section