You can get Pertec interface cards for both 8 and 16 bit ISA bus, MCA bus and I bet the PCI bus. I have know several people that ran large tape drives on PCs using a pertec interface card. Of course SCSI tape drives will run off a SCSI card in a PC also. The Kennedy 9610 SCSI front loader was sometimes mated with a PC this way. We had a person in Oregon in the 1990s that got the Department of Motor Vehicles registration list on reel tape and converted it to CDs and sold it on a quarterly basis untill it was made illegal because of identity theft. He worked it uout using a pertec interface in a IBM PC. I think he used a Qualstor tape Drive with a pertec interface. At that time DMV would only sell the data on Reel to Reel tapes. Paxton -- Paxton Hoag Astoria, OR USA

On 2/18/07, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote: I have an HP 7980A 9-track with a GPIB interface. The CS/80 docs on bitsavers include tape commands. I haven't had a reason yet to try to write any code to talk to it from a PC. -Glen

On Sun, 18 Feb 2007, jd wrote: I think you're looking for HP7974A,HP7978A/B,HP7979A,HP7980A,HP7980XC HP-IB Interface Protocol Specifications from Greeley Storage Division, I have revision 6.55 from May 8, 1989 as a PDF document. (Al: Do you need this document?) Christian

jd wrote: Found it: 5955-3442--what a coincidence; it's on bitsavers! (Wow... whodathunk.) Thanks anonymous-whoever-posted-it-person. My life is now complete. (^_^) O... Wait. Theres' more stuff to do... Nevermind. -- jd There's an old proverb that says just about whatever you want it to.

I think you're looking for HP7974A,HP7978A/B,HP7979A,HP7980A,HP7980XC Cool... I'd really like a copy of that doc. Please let me know the URL when it gets posted. NOTE: Most of the 9000/800 series boxes, including the small ones (IE F20), had HPIB ports installed from the factory. If you can find one of those systems, you'll have an ideal machine not only for accessing your 9-track but for talking to all kinds of HPIB devices. The last couple of machines I got off Bay went for < $50 each. See Ya, SteveRob

F20), Because it seems to be the easiest path to making practical use of the tape drive. I'm not saying it can't be done your way, it's just a matter of what's easiest and most practical (for the rest of us). For that matter, I have read data off HPIB disks and tapes using a HPIB bus analyzer one byte at a time. Sure it can be done but, it ain't for the faint of heart! OK... Quick survey. How many people on the list own a HPIB bus analyzer and have ever made "real" use of it? So... Assuming you had a HPIB tape drive, 9816, and a PC. Exactly what steps would be required to transfer data between the PC and 9-track? I can tell you what's required to accomplish the same task with an inexpensive, readily available, HPUX box. 1.) FTP the file from PC to HPUX box - Networking is included in the base HPUX install. 2.) Copy the data to the TAPE drive - HPIB and TAPE drivers are also included in the base install. Hmm... Question: Can a 9 track tape drive be set up as a NFS mount? If so, skip step one ;-) 3.) Have a cold beer while Tony solders together a serial cable to link his 9816 to the PC. 4.) Have another beer while Tony writes (both ends) of a kermit-like program to transfer the data. NOTE: Surely the easiest way would be to find a 9-Track with SCSI interface and hook it directly to the PC. Does Windows and/or Linux provide support for the drives? I'd gladly trade a spare 7980 HPIB drive for a SCSI one. See ya, SteveRob

Speaking of HPIB.... I wanted to build interface electronics so that one of my "modern" machines could act as HPIB disk for my hp300s. While I was working on this, I suspect I managed to short something to soemthing else unfortunate and blow a driver. It stopped working even when my electronics were out of the loop, and one of the bits semeed to have developed a stuck-at fault, hence my suspicion. Is there anyone here who knows enough about typical HPIB hardware of the hp300 era to be able to take a list of chip markings and tell me which one is probably the relevant driver? Preferably, also tell me enough that I can patch on a substitute (if necessary by stealing a driver chip from other hardware - for example, I've got a dead HPIB disk drive which I could raid for chips at need)? /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

Then I guess this isn't modern-ish. :-) The suspect hardware is a 98625A; what tracing I've managed to do seems to lead back to four 16-pin DIPs labeled with an HP code (1820-2058, to be specific). This hardware is entirely through-hole DIP. Not a suface-mount part in sight. Fairly low-density through-hole DIP, too - on a board measuring 17x14 cm, there are only 31 chips: one of 48 pins, three of 20 pins, fourteen of 16 pins, and and thirteen of 14 pins (well, thirteen 14-pin DIP packages; I think two are resistor packs rather than logic), plus two ten-pin SIP resistor packs, a two-switch DIP switch bank, a five-switch DIP switch bank, a small pot, four discrete resistors, seventeen discrete capacitors, and a crystal oscillator. Oh, and card-edge fingers on one side and a back panel with an HPIB connector on the other. /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

On 21 Feb 2007 at 2:25, Tony Duell wrote: If you're communicating to a single device, it's possible to use a PC paralell port (particularly a bidirectional one) to do the job. A very long time ago, I needed to draw a color pie chart. I had a copy of Supercalc and a friend loaned me an HP 5-pen (IIRC) plotter that he'd picked up at the going-out-of-business sale of the Control Data retail stores. I had a PC XT at the time. The problem was that the plotter was GPIB only. I hacked the parallel port on the IBM MDA to do bidirectional I/O (easy--just a cut and a jumper). I wrote a TSR that hooked the parallel port BIOS interrupt and translated the codes intended for a parallel-interface plotter to GPIB strings. I told Supercalc that it was driving the parallel-port version of the plotter and bingo--I had my charts. You can probably still find the code in one of the SIMTEL archives, but I can't remember what I called it--something like LPTHPIB, IIRC. Cheers, Chuck