HPIB Stuff - some capture stuff

Hey Rodney, Hope you don't mind but, I'm gonna post this to the classiccmp list. Someone there may want to follow the discussion. What kind of system are you running the PCI Analyzer on? Windows? Linux? I have FINALLY made some more progress with the ISA GPIB card in my Linux box. Unfortunately, it uses the NEC7210 chip which has been a pain in the rear to program. I found a few snippets of code online but really didn't find anything that directly addressed my needs. I have been able to read and write small data packets to the HP7980 but that's about all. With the tape drive, you have to worry about block sizes, file and record markers, rewind, readahead... Blah... Blah... Blah... As of now, I have not yet figured out how to handle all that stuff. So, I decided to take a break from the tape drive and concentrate on the HPIB CS80 disks. I suspect the HP150 is using the "Cold Load" command to read the tape on bootup. I have not been able to read a tape using that method on my PC (yet). I was already familiar with the CS80 protocol so, I just had to learn to program the 7210 chip. It took a while but, I can finally, with some confidence, program the 7210 to do what I need. I was also able to write some code to support a couple of HP instruments (multimeter / frequency counter) over HPIB. Programming the CS80 disk was fairly easy and, at this point, I can read or write a raw binary file to any partition (including boot) of the HPIB disk from my PC (linux). That disk is then bootable from the HP1000 with a CS80 ROM. I have created a small "library" of sorts with the common CS80 methods and another with the HPIB methods in another. I'm not a "C" programmer so, anyone looking at the code would probably think it's sloppy. But, it works (sorta) :-) The question is: What exactly are your goals at this point? If you're still trying to boot the HP150 off the HP7980, I can probably provide some additional insight into the tape protocol although, I cannot provide any specific info for programming the HP150. One of the problems with programming the tape drive is that you cannot slow down the data interchange to see exactly what it is doing. With the disk there is no "timeout" for any of the transactions. You can slow down (or halt) the bus and watch the interaction between the disk and the computer without causing any errors. You cannot do this with the tape drive. It'll throw an error :-( Furthermore, when the computer boots there is a large chunk of data that is passed across the bus this bloats your analyzer's capture and makes it much harder to pick out the important bits. You might try to capture only the transactions where the ATN is asserted. This will filter out the "data" and only leave the commands to wade through. If you have a HPIB card with the 7210 or 9914 I can perhaps provide some insight into register level programming with those chips. I have not given up on the AMIGO tape protocol. I just have been focused on other stuff :-) There is a steep learning curve when tackling all these protocols at the same time. My suggestion would be to break up the project into smaller chunks. The first thing is to figure out how to do the register level programming on the HPIB card. You will need to know how to send and receive "commands" and "data", how to conduct a "parallel poll", and how to change "states" on the card. The tape and disk protocols are not simple, I would also suggest using a simple device (HPIB meter etc...) to refine you programming. Use the analyzer card to watch the bus to see exactly what happens when a certain chunk of code is executed. Once you get predictable results, it'll be easier to tackle a more complex protocol. Talk to me about the HP150. What HPIB chip does it use? Does your version of DOS/UNIX have the tools that you need to do register level programming? I have HPUX 10.20 on a HP9000/800 that has HPIB support built in. Does the 150 have this kinda support? See ya, SteveRob steerex at ccvn.com