HP 64000 with 80186 emulator?

At 11:05 PM 4/23/04 -0600, you wrote: I want to say DC300 but I'm not sure, it's been a long time. However it's the same tapes that are used in the HP-85s. Check the archives, they have been plenty of discussions about HP-85 tapes and drives. Don't waste your time or money on old HP tapes, they're ALL bad. Take my word for it!!!

You can use the old DC 2(something) 40 Mb tapes that were used for backups in PCs. The DEC CompacTape will also work. The tapes will have to formatted. I'm not sure if the 64000 can do that or not but the HP-85 and 9825 can so I suspect the 64000 can too. Can't remember, IIRC it was the The ones that I've seen with the tape drives are marked 64000. The ones with the two floppy disks were marked 64100 and the large "portable" one were marked 64110. The portable version is built like an

overweight!) Kaypro. I've seen that shown in some of the manuals but I suspect that they would require the use of some kind of SRM (Shared Resource Manager) software. You could also hook You'd have a lot better luck finding a 7957, 7958 or 7959. They're a lot smaller, newer and more reliable. I've NEVER found one of the large 79xx drives that was still working. The 7957, 7958 and 7959 are roughly 80 Mb, 150 Mb and 300 Mb capacity. If you only need 15, 20 or 40 Mb then you can probably use a 9133, 9134, 9153 or something of that type. 20 Mb doesn't sound like much but it's more than enough for most of the old HP computers. I have a 80 Mb 7958 attached to my HP Integral and I've installed every piece of software that was ever available for the IPC and I've only used a fraction of the drive. Hint. If you're considering the purchase of any of these HP drives, plug it in first and power it up without connecting it to a system. The newer ones have built-in self test and thry will run for about a minute and test the drive. If the fault light comes on and stays on then the drive is bad so don't buy it. Some of the early ones have a 2 character display on the back. If they pass selftest it will show P and the HP-IB code (2 for example). If they say F something then they failed self test. ALSO on some (or all?) models powering them up >>with no system attached<< will cause them to park the heads. That's another reason that I always power them up before purchasing and moving them. One more thing! If you get involved with any of the 3.5" floppy drives be warned that the double sided drive have a bad tendency to get gummy and not open completely. When that happens, the top head will catch on the disk when you try to insert or remove it. That will ruin both the head and disk. Check these carefully BEFORE even putting a disk in them. The good news is that all you need to do to fix the problem is to clean the old grease off the drive and relubricate it. Check the archives for more information. I believe I gave some to Frank a couple of years ago but the biggest problem is going to be finding a good tape drive. If somebody is serious about these they should fix one of the tape drives then connect a external floppy drive and dump the tapes to a^H MULTIPLE floppy disk. That's what I've been wanting to do with the HP-85 and HP 9825 software. The tape drive isn't exactly the same as that used in the HP-85 and other calculators. It is the same as that used in some of HP Spectrum Analyzers and other test equipment. But it's similar enough that you can follow the instructions for fixing a HP-85 tape dirve. Those have been published here on the list several times and should be available in the archives. The main things that you need to watch are to get the roller the right size and close to being round. Joe