13 Sep
1999
13 Sep
'99
10:04 a.m.
At 06:49 PM 9/13/99 +0100, Tony said:
How could I forget -- I was given a portable+ a few months back. It has
HPIL (of course)...
The HPIB is a kludge :-). The basic instrument is HPIL, and the HPIB
board is a microcontroller + ROMs + 1LB3 + interface parts.
Yes, the HP-IB version of the ThinkJet does the same thing. I haven't
looked at the 3421 circuit so there may be some differences but the IL
ThinkJet converts HP-IB to HP-IL and most of the rest of the interface is
standard HP-IL. That's odd considering that the IL version was the only
battery powered ThinkJet and HP had to make MANY changes to the rest of the
electronics to allow the printer to run off of a battery. Besides the
battery powereed one with the IL interface, HP was building AC powered
ThinkJets with RS-232, HP-IB and Centronics interfaces. Many years later HP
came out with a battery powered ThinkJet that used a Centronics interface.
Joe
I have (somewhere) the HP specs for HP-IL, and the 1LB3 HPIL interface
chip data sheet (heck, although not IL-related, I have the 1LQ4 Saturn bus
-> JEDEC memory interface chip data sheets somewhere...). Oh, and the
HP71 HPIL module IDS (ROM sources, etc for the HP71 HP-IL code). With
those I can generally figure out HPIL problems
Have you ever had to fix any IL stuff? I've never seen one fail (knock
on wood!)
I just wish I had more of it. I've got it on some HP handhelds (71B,
75C), on my 150, and that's about it. I've got some of the interfaces
(RS232, HPIB, GPIO, Video), but no storage devices or printers (yet!!).
ThinkJet printers and 9114 disk drives are fairly common if you look for
them. A lot of times you'll find them bundled with HP 110 Portable I picked
up an HP3421 (I think that's the number -- the data
logger/multimeter thingy) with HPIL and HPIB on it for a couple of pounds
at a factory sale aa few years back. Nobody else knew what it was. I
didn't really know what it was, but it said HP, and looked interesting
:-)... Still not figured out how to make it do something useful, but it
returns a sane ID when probed on the HPIL so I guess it's doing something.
The 3421 is really nice, doubley so both interfaces. You can use it on