25 Jul
2014
25 Jul
'14
8:57 a.m.
Chris,
I'm not familiar with those USB-HPIB converters but, can tell you a good bus
analyzer is invaluable. I've used a HP59401A to talk to a drive like the
7963 and it worked great. They show up on quite often on ebay and are
usually reasonably priced. As a matter of fact there are several on there
right now.
NOTE: I don't know any of the sellers or anything other than what is says
in the ads but, it might be something worth looking at.
Working HPIB drives are becoming much harder to find. I used to find them in
the scrap yards for a few bucks apeice but, haven't seen any in quite a long
time. At one time, I probably had 50 of them. I still have a few but, since
they are hard to replace, would rather not part with them.
See ya,
Steve Robertson
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris Osborn" <fozztexx at fozztexx.com>
To: "General Discussion: On-Topic Posts Only" <cctech at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Friday, July 25, 2014 11:08 AM
Subject: ZoomFloppy and HPIB Interfacing
I just got one of the ZoomFloppy USB converters with
the HPIB interface
included. I decided to get that one because of all the open source USB to
HPIB converters, it was the cheapest. However so far I can't find any
information that anyone has used one to talk to anything except Commodore
GPIB devices.
Right now I'd like to see if it's possible to use the ZoomFloppy to read
from my old HP 9133. After that it would be nice to see if I can use it to
diagnose the 7958 where the fault light comes on. My ultimate goal is to
be able to use the ZoomFloppy to emulate an HPIB disk drive, either with
the HPDrive project or something else.
I don't have the time at the moment to try to write any software and I'm
hoping someone else has tried it and can give me some pointers. If there's
really nothing out there I will probably try to write my own software, but
I don't know how soon I can get to it.