TAMS is fully committed to supporting the Red Hat Linux operating system. By supporting Red Hat Linux with TAMS products, we are enabling customers to deploy Test & Measurement solutions on the lowest cost and reliable hardware and operating system infrastructure. We believe that Linux is more attractive today than it ever was, as customers are looking for reliable and cost effective solutions. Many of our products offer Legacy HP-UX and RMB users a migration path to Red Hat Linux.  Please contact us with any questions and check back for updates.

This page describes what we're working on and provides answers to some frequently asked questions.  

TAMS L488 LAN GPIB Adapter Faster than a Gateway and half the cost!  The TAMS L488 is a high speed, low latency LAN GPIB adapter for use with Linux, Windows and HPUX.   The L488 includes our new LAN Libraries that allow for better kernel independence than the SICL/VISA IO libraries.  If you need GPIB on an unsupported RHEL kernel, this is the solution.

Frequently asked questions:

Q: Will TAMS products work with other Linux distribution besides Red Hat?

A:  TAMS L488 LAN-GPIB Adapter now includes a LAN Library for Linux.  This allows for greater kernel independence than our full I/O Libraries.  We have not tested the LAN Libraries on every distribution, however, this may be an option if you really need GPIB on an unsupported RHEL kernel.  The L488 is our only product that may work on an unsupported kernel.  It will probably work with any RHEL 4uX and above.

The full SICL/VISA I/O library software and our PCI/PCIe/USB interface drivers do not work on other Linux distributions  (such as White Box, Yellow Dog, Debian, Ubunto, Mandriva, SuSe, Turbolinux, Slackware or the Fedora Core). The software is kernel specific and we support our products only on specific kernels of Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  The SICL/VISA I/O Libraries are supported on the original, unpatched Red Hat Enterprise Linux kernels listed here.  The IO cards are dependant on IO library support.  BASIC and SRM/LX do not necessarily track the same as the IO libraries so check the revision pages for those specific products.  If it is on the list, we support it and it will work  If it isn't on the list then it won't work.  If you attempt to install the package under an unsupported kernel (e.g. *bigmem),  the kernel driver will not load.  

CentOS aims to be 100% binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.  We don't test or support it, but some customers have successfully deployed our software on CentOS.

Q: How do I know if I am running the 32-bit or 64-bit version of Red Hat Linux?

A: Red Hat does not distinguish whether the kernel is 32-bit or 64-bit in the kernel revision. To find out which of these you are running, at the Unix command prompt, type:
       uname -mr
If it prints 'i686', then you are running the 32-bit version. If it prints 'x86_64', then you are running the 64-bit version of the kernel.

Q: What is TAMS support plan?

A: In general, we'll provide technical support for our current software release and one previous version.  (e.g. we'll fix a problem in versions 3.5 and 3.4, but not in 3.0)   We do not support every patch or kernel version that Red Hat releases.  Legacy code is always available.  We will continue to support Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) because it is a stable and tested Linux platform and the majority of our customers use it.

Q: What about VEE on Linux?

A: VEE Pro is a current Agilent Technologies product and they are responsible for its support.  At this time, Agilent does not support VEE on Linux and we do not expect them to do so in the future.  

Q: I already have the TAMS I/O Libraries for Linux (T82091) installed.  Do I need to uninstall it and install the LAN Libraries for Linux (T82090) from the L488 CD?

A: No.  If you already have the full version of the TAMS I/O Libraries for Linux installed, you can continue to use it with your L488.

Q: I am using the TAMS I/O Libraries for Linux (T82091) and cannot find the /opt/sicl/bin/lanfind utility mentioned in the documentation.  Where can I find it?

A: The "lanfind" utility was not included in version 3.4 or earlier of the TAMS I/O Libraries for Linux.  It is included on the L488 CD in the linux/ directory.  You can run the utility directly from the CD.