HP-86/87: Uploading floppy images over a serial connection

A lot of people have been asking me how to transfer the contents of HP Series 80 floppies to a modern machine (and vice versa, of course). Up till now I have been using my Integral PC to upload binary images of the Series 80 floppies. The reason I prefer the images to the files created by LIFUTIL, is that the image can be copied back to a new floppy without dealing with the filename conversions, restoring the diskette volume name, etc. The problem with this approach is that only people with Integral PCs (or other HP-UX systems with HP-IB interfaces) may use this path [1], plus that I need to unpack and fiddle with the Integral PC every time I need to make a copy. Moreover, getting the stuff *off* the IPC is a pain because I only have the HP-IB interface. Anyway, while reading the old PCC Computer Journal issues, I came across a very interesting article by Pete Goffinet on how to use the HP binary utility "r" which is provided with the HP-86/87 Demo Disc. "r" is a binary program that contains two commands, RSECTOR for reading arbitrary sectors of an HP-IB mass storage device, and WSECTOR for writing them! I have written a pair of programs (one for the HP-87 and another for my Unix box) that allow entire images to be uploaded using an HP-87 with a serial interface. Writing a program to download images is also trivial. Do note that the programs I have written are unbelievably slooooow. If anybody can come up with some sort of speedup, pls let me know. Also, "r" works only on the HP-86/87, so the procedure will *not* work with an HP-85 (or HP-83). If anybody has an equivalent binary program for the HP-85, pls send it along. For more info read the article "Transferring diskette images from an HP-86/7 to a PC via a serial connection" at http://www.series80.org/Articles/xfer.html The HP-86/87 Demo Disc is also available at: http://www.series80.org/Programs/DEMO87/index.html (I'll also post a utility for listings and unbundling LIF floppies on a Unix box in the next couple of days). **vp [1] If you use Linux, note, that there is a comprehensive package for reading LIF floppies, called lifutils, written by Tony Duell. Unfortunately it does not run under OpenBSD which is the system I am using.