The only positive thing the PC would bring to the table is the display. Everthing else associated with computer-controlled test equipment is a negative.

I've been using test equipment with more-or-less (some more, some less) portable chassis + plugin (Tektronix TM500 and TM5000-based) configurations since the '70's, and the basic concept is really convenient when compared with separate "boxex" for each piece of hardware. However, the replacement of all those specialized dials, buttons, and knobs, that made each piece of equipment, be it a pulse generator, frequency counter, filter, amplifier, multimeter, function generator, power supply, or whatever, would all be in the toilet if one had to use a single computer-controlled virtual "front-panel" on a PC. Between loss of interaction and inaccessibility of one or another front panel because of the GUI, the whole mess becomes useless. I've found, again and again, that I have to have access to all the controls at once. If I'm using three or four instruments together, and an oscilloscope to monitor the result, I arrange them such that they're all conveniently accesible. With a menu-driven GUI, it's NEVER convenient, even with a single instrument. I've tried various GUI-driven HPIB instruments and even those are difficult to use with the GUI.

The only instrumentation I've resigned myself to using in computer-controlled form is the logic analyzer and arbitrary-waveform generator. They're GUI-controlled because the front panel would otherwise be 2 meters wide and a meter tall and you'd never find your way to the button or switch you need anyway, so the computer control is not as much of a compromise as with oscilloscopes and other test equipment.

The reason convenient test instruments are so expensive is not because of the display, but because all those very convenient switches and buttons, yes, even the ones you seldom use, are costly and yet essential.

Just consider a case in which you have to adjust the frequency on instrument "A" (sweep signal generator) while tweaking the passband on instrument "B" (filter) and amplitude on instrument "C" (amplifier) in order to observe the product of their influence on the circuit under test on instruments "D" (counter) and "E" (Oscilloscope). While it's not inconceivable that one might be able to present that, perhaps awkwardly, on a GUI, it doesn't seem that anyone has done it in a way that I'd like to try. After all, one spends hours working out the details with instruments that are all simultaneously accessible. It would take days on a GUI if at all useful, and I wouldn't want to have to do it that way.

RE