13 Mar
2002
13 Mar
'02
7:57 a.m.
Hello,
Nice find! I have a couple of these and ONE
keyboard. It took me four
years of serious searching to find it!
About two months ago I noticed a complete HP-85 (tapes, manuals and a 19" rack
with HP-IB equipment) at a local industial recycling facility and told this to
a friend of mine. He immediately wanted to buy this, but when I asked, it was
already sold...
So this weekend I was at a HAM market and saw some manuals with HP-85 printed
on them and underneath was the 9915a, which I didn't recognize at the moment. I
talked a bit to the guy selling it and got it for EUR 20 (about $20), which I
hope is a good price.
AFIK this is the only keyboard around. They are
EXTREMELY rare!
Am I correct in thinking that with the keyboard I can use the 9915A as a HP-
85? Or is the keyboard just a row of digital inputs which can be read out by a
basic program?
Can I do anything usefull with a HPIB terminal? Somebody on the sunrescue list
mailed me this, but then I've tried a terminal with the serial card and that
didn't work..
The tape approach is the easiest to use EXCEPT just
about all the 9915 and HP
85 tape drive rollers have gone soft with age.
Aha, I also haven't gotten any tapes... Are these still obtainable somewhere?
I've made a schematic of it. I'll try to find
it but I'm not promising that
I'll be able to. The "keyboard" connector is also used to output some
status and control signals so be carefull if you start experimenting with
it. I've been looking for a long time but I've only been able to find a
couple of manuals for the 9915 and they're not very helpfull.
Those schematics would be nice if you found them, I haven't tried hooking up
anything to the keyboard ports yet in fear of breaking something. The manuals I
have are:
HP-85 Owner's manual and programming guide (2x)
Printer/plotter owner's manual
I/O programming guide
HPIB installation and theory of operation manual
HPIB peripheral installation instructions
registration and warranty cards :)
regards,
Michiel