4 Aug
2005
4 Aug
'05
10:30 a.m.
At 05:25 PM 8/4/05 +0200, you wrote:
Tony,
I haven't hooked it up to any system because I dont have any system
to hook it up to.
That is sort of my second question; if I would buy a modern PCI GPIB
card would I be able to make it work with the 7580A or other similar
devices ?
It should. I used to use a HP 7550 over a serial port on my PC running
Win 3.1. Windows already had a driver for it. It was cool to write a
document then change the colors in different parts of it and then print it
on the plotter. The plotter would DRAW each letter and change pens when
necessary. And it was fast! It was cool as hell to watch it in action! The
plotter couldn't handle things with raster (large areas) graphics but it
was fine for things that only included vectors such as text.
If you go buy a HP-IB card then make sure that it includes drivers or
that you can get drivers for it. My suggestion would be to find an old PC
that has ISA slots then find an ISA HP-IB card. They're both CHEAP these days.
Joe
Stefan.
At 02:01 4-8-2005, you wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.oldcomputercollection.com
I dug up a HP 7580A and hooked it up, it seems to work fine.
But the question is now, how do I make it do anything, WITHOUT a system ?
Pressin pen down doesn't do much, and although I can move left and
right I cant make it move the paper forward and backward.
Are you saying these functions do work correctly from the computer
interface (in other words you can send it (presuambly) an HPGL file and
get it to plot it correctly?).
If so, have you checked that that the frontpanel buttons are actually
making proper contact?
-tony