Capital Equipment / Keithley PCI-488 GPIB controller boards
PCI host adapter cards from Capital Equipment Corporation (PCI-488) and Keithley (KPCI-488) that let a PC talk to lab and test instruments over the IEEE-488 / GPIB bus. These boards date from the early 2000s and are mostly found in legacy electronics test benches, scientific rigs, and industrial measurement setups.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the GPIB subsystem as a whole was promoted out of staging into the mainline drivers tree in November 2025, and this specific board driver received cleanup work in early 2026, so it is actively maintained rather than rotting. The hardware itself is no longer sold new and only a small number of legacy lab installations still rely on it, so a short note about its narrow scope and vintage would help future maintainers and packagers.
repository signals
sources
- patch.msgid.link
The GPIB subtree, including this driver, was moved out of staging into drivers in November 2025, indicating active upstream acceptance rather than pending removal.
- patch.msgid.link
This driver received driver-specific cleanup work in January 2026, showing recent substantive maintenance.
- cateee.net
LKDDb maps CONFIG_GPIB_CEC_PCI to Capital Equipment Corp vendor ID 12fc, device 5cec, and describes it as support for Capital Equipment Corporation PCI-488 and Keithley KPCI-488 boards.
- linux-gpib.sourceforge.io
Linux-GPIB lists the supported board as Capital Equipment Corporation PCI-488 using the cec_gpib module, suggesting a narrow legacy hardware footprint.
- tek.com
Public vendor-hosted software material for related CEC/KPCI-488 hardware is dated 2008, consistent with old, no-longer-new product lines rather than current-volume sales.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Keep with annotation, not deprecate/remove: the strongest upstream evidence is recent positive maintenance, not removal talk. `git show` via `exec_command` exposed patch.msgid links for the November 2025 destaging series and January 2026 cec-specific cleanup series. Deployment looks low because web search results for LKDDb and Linux-GPIB show only a small set of legacy Capital Equipment/Keithley PCI-488 boards; Tektronix-hosted related driver downloads found via `web.search_query` are from 2008. I infer 'not sold new in 2025' from that legacy-only public footprint; exact last widely available year is uncertain, so left null.