Found a similar rig set up years ago. The old Tektronix TDS scopes used to lock up in a go/no go test rig and stop responding to GPIB commands. Someone unknown got fed up of it so they wired a relay in a box up as an inline switch for the scope power and drove it from a spare port in a GPIB switch box that the test script talked to. This turned the scope on and off again before each test cycle so it was less likely to crash. This saved hours and hours of failed test runs.