Vaisala SPT11A reader (was Data General Nova Star Trek)

Thanks Erik; very helpful. For reference, mine also shares the same firmware revision. Can you share your source code as well?

-----Original Message----- From: Erik Baigar [mailto:erik at baigar.de] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2016 5:33 AM To: Paul Birkel Cc: jwsmail at jwsss.com; cctalk at classiccmp.org; shermanfoy at att.net Subject: Vaisala SPT11A reader (was Data General Nova Star Trek) Dear Paul, thanks for your email - I acquired the reader several years ago and did quite a lot of experiments to figure out how to use it with the original firmware SPTS11, 2.02, 5289 but I never got an answer from the reader. So the project of Jim to read in the DG tapes was the reason I needed to address this issue. For your (and the communities) convenience I placed the original firmware (27C256 type EPROM)... http://www.baigar.de/electronics/PTR-SPTS11-2.02-5289.bin ...and my new one (also 27C256)... http://www.baigar.de/electronics/PTR-SPTS11-EB1.01.hex ...onto my server. My new firmware just sends out the data read via the serial port at 9600, 8N1. A welcome messages tests the serial communication on starting and during this time the red LED is on. On getting ready the green LED takes over and the yellow one shows the state of the sprocket input: For each byte read this LED flashes. At 9600 the serial port is always faster than you can pull the tape through the reader, so I do not expect the red LED (indicate a buffer overflow, byte lost) come on during normal operation... The pinout of the Sub-D9 male plug is as usual on serial ports: 5: GND, 2: Data from reader to PC, 3: Data from PC to reader (not used in my firmware, but original expects some start/config command here) additionally 7: DC input to reader (in my case 9V). Hope this helps, best regards, Erik. On Tue, 26 Apr 2016, Paul Birkel wrote: (9600,8N1).