Rob: Check out the 150 series software collection on this page: http://www.hpmuseum.net/collection_software.php They have system disc with MS-DOS 2.01 available for download. Mike Loewen mloewen at cpumagic.scol.pa.us Old Technology http://sturgeon.css.psu.edu/~mloewen/Oldtech/

Yes. I have a couple of original HP150s and an HP150-II. I do like HP machines, the older ones seem to be well-designed and well-made. So do I. I also like 3 Rivers machines (PERQs), Philips machines, and a lot of others. It's jsut that theposts on DEC machines here recently have been about machiens I know nothing about (this is my problem, I am certainly not saying such posts do not belong on this list, of course they do). OK. In many ways that;s the more interesting version. It will ahve the touchscreen, all original machiens do. It was an option on the HP150-II, which apparently was not often fitted. Well, yes, it does run the monitro. It also runs the computer. The computer stuff (8088 processor, etc) is i nthe smae case as the CRT. On the back of this unit are the 2 serial ports and the HPIB port The 9121 isa disk drive. Yes, there is a processor inside, a 6809 of some flavour (I forget the clock speed, it may well be a 68B09). But t does not run user programs. It interprets commands sent of the HPIB interface and operates the disk drives. The drives are SOny _single sided_ ones. You need a signle-sided MS-DOS boot disk for this set-up. THe HP9121 PSU is quite simple. It;'s linear. There;'s a mnins transformer, rectifier diodes, smoothing cams and regulators 9on that large heatsink) on the controller PCB. The fan is a low-votlage capacitor-run induction motor. It runs off the mains tranformer scondary winding. The run capacitor is a couple of electrolytics wired in invers sereis on the PCB. The only mains stuff is on the inoput side of the trnaformer -- the connector, power switch, voltage selctoir, etc. This is a freidnly unit to work on, but you probably won't have to. They are reliable. The disk drives themselves suffer from dried up grease o nthe eject mechanism. On double-sided drives thic can result in the upper head catching on the disk when it is ejected, and then the head getting ripped off the gimbal spring. SIngle sided drives don't hav this problem, but they still often need taking apart and cleaning. It's not difficult, but there are quite a few bits. OK, back to the main unit, the one with the CRT in. On top there are some remvoable covers. Take those off. Insdie youy may see a thermal printer. This is an option, if you don't have it the machine will still run. If you do have it, unplug the ribbon cable (34 way IIRC), pull up the Nyltach fasteners and take the printer unit out. Now o nthe pack of the unit there are 2 quarter0turn fasteners on the bottom edge of the top case, near the metal cardcage backplate. Releasse these witha Phillips (not Pozidriv) screwdriver. The top case then comes off backwrds and upwrds. But be careful. The cooling fan is on the top case, It is plugged int oteh PSU board. When you get the caove free, unplug this cable and put the cover aside., Inside the machine you will see the CRT and 2 PCBS. Looking from the rear of the machine, the one on the left, with the flyback transfomrmer and the HV lead to the CRT anode cap, is the video monitor. It is fairly conventional. The one on the right is the SMPSU for the machine. This is the one with a pair of capacitors aimed at the CRT neck. So be careful. I mentioned getting insdie the card cage yesterday., You want ot do that to see what you have. It';s worth seeing if you have n expansion boards. The memroy-omnly board is not obvious from outside the macchine, you put the normal blanking pate back on after fitting it. So it may not be obvious whether you have it. The 2 expansion boards nnd the logic boarsd I mentioend all plug into a little backpalne at the fornt of the case -- HP call it the 'forntplane' in the technical manual. As well as connectors for the boards, it has connectros for cablkes ot the monitor board, the touchscreen board (aronf the front of the CRT), the PSU and the printer (20 way -- the other 14 wires of the 34 way priner cable go to a 14 pin conenctoro n the PSU board). There are a few chips on the 'frontplane', thse are the interface for the thermal printer unit. Basically, a simple parallel port. You need to read the available manuals - -alm,ost all of them. In particualr, you need to read the bit about configurign the machine. The configuration is stroed in battery-backed RAM (i nthe real time clock IC) and if the battery is flat or removed you will have to reset this. Note that the defualt, IIRC is for the machine to act as a terminal (using software in the ROMs), unless ou change thsi to 'computer' the machine will not attempt to boot from disk . -tony

They are very interesting machines, although many in the UK were wasted running PNX (PERQ Unix). Quite honestly, if you want a unix box there are other choices. PERQs are fun when they run the OSes designed for them. I am not sure where you'd find one now. I am cetainly keeping all four of mine (!). [Back to the HP150] Does it have the ribbon cable for the printer (it plugs into both the backpalne and the PSU board)? I might be able to find a spare HP2674 pritner unit, but I know I don;'t have the cable. It could easily be made, though. There is a metal bracket, but IIRC not all machines had it (or perhaps it's HP120s, much the xame casing/PSU/monitor, that was often missing this shield between the PSU and the CRT neck). But anyway it can't hurt to check. Good. That is, of course, a switch-mode PSU, and most of the circuitry is on the mains side of the isolation barrier. Much like the part of thr H7140 you are working on... That is a prity. The memroy board (fixed ot the CPU board) will have a maximum of 256K on it. I think 128K machines exited, but I have never seen one. In any caxe upgradign the RAM to 256K is not too hard. But a lot of software needs 512K or 640K. The 384K memory board (HP45632 IIRC) is very useful. Tht is the video board. There are a couple of 40 pin ICs on it, one is a CRT9007 CRT controller used for the text display. The other is HP custom 1820-3091, and is the graphics controller. I think that's the only true custom (as opposed to programemd) IC in the machine. Right This is not uncommon, normally a good scrape cures it. . FWIW,. the batteries conenct on the video bord, but the votlage is not used there. The -ve side of the battery is groudned, the +ve side goes ot a couple of adjacent pins on the backplane conenctor. It hen goes over the backplane to the CPU board where it feeds into a diode circuit and powers the real time clock IC (MM58167). It also ends up on the expansion board connectors, but I'ev yet to find an expansion board that uses the battery voltage. That batteries are nto ahrd to get. You have the palstic holder with the spring contact in it, I hope. You need 2 size N cells. These are also known as 'ladies' (particularly in continental Europe) or LR1 cells. I ampretty sure Farnell do them. THe Maplin I was in today had a pack of 2 on the rack. Many supermarkets keep them. At least one 'pounds shop' sells a pack of 5 obtects -- 2 N cells, 2 A23 12V batteris (about the same size) and one A27 12V battery (smaller). If you get the last pack, do be sure to ptu the 1.5V cells in the HP150. You do not want to apply 13.5V or worse 24V to the real time clock IC. I would got as far as to check the voltage across the open ends of the battery nnit before putting the holder into the machine. It only takes a few seconds. One common problem is touchscreen errors. Most of the time this is just dirt collecing in the holes and block the light beak. Occasionally the IR LEDs and phototranssitors fail. But it is not too hard to sort out, and the parts are available. -tony

[Internal printer] I am pretty sure I have a spare HP2674 printer unit somewhere. It's not light 9so postage might be expensive), but if I come across it I will let you know. You should also clean that double cone spring at the back of the battery holder. This, of course, conenctes th 2 batteris in series. And chack you have fitted them the right wy round. If not, it does no damage, but it will not work. The battery +ve conenction goes to 2 pins on the video board conenctor to the backplane. The pinout I have for this connector is : BA(0) --o o-- +5V BA(1) --o o-- Gnd BA(2) --o o-- BRst/ BA(3) --o o-- Gnd BA(4) --o o-- ExtWait/ BA(5) --o o-- +5V BA(6) --o o-- BIO/M/ BA(7) --o o-- Gnd BA(8) --o o-- IR0/ BA(9) --o o-- Gnd BA(10)--o o-- BGO BA(11)--o o-- Gnd BA(12)--o o-- BClk BA(13)--o o-- Gnd BA(14)--o o-- +5V BA(15)--o o-- Gnd BA(16)--o o-- BIO/M/a BA(17)--o o-- Gnd BA(18)--o o-- BDT/R/ BA(19)--o o-- N/C BD(0) --o o-- +5V BA(1) --o o-- N/C BD(2) --o o-- BRd/ BD(3) --o o-- Gnd BD(4) --o o-- Spare BD(5) --o o-- Gnd BD(6) --o o-- +5V BD(7) --o o-- Gnd +5V --o o-- VSync/ +5V --o o-- Gnd +12V --o o-- HSync +12V --o o-- Gnd +12V --o o-- HalfBrt/ +VBat --o o-- FullBrt/ +VBat --o o-- Gnd LHS Of machine ^ | <--- Top That is drawn looking into the connector on the backplane. It's possible the batter gunge has corrooded the conenction between the pin and the track. You could ckeck to make sure the +ve battery terminal does indeed conenct to the right pins on the socket conenctor on the video board. On the CPU PCB -- the other large one in the cardcage -- There is a testpoint pableed CMOS PWR. it's almsot impossible to get to with the machine assembled, which is what uou need to be able to install the batteies. But if you solder a bit of wire there and feed it out through a slot in the back panel, then put the battery holder in, you can check the power to the real time clock. Expect about 2.5V there (battery voltage lsess one diode drop) with the machine off, and 5V with the machine on. YEs, they are very nice little machines... FOr the touchscreen, the first thign to do is to take the CRT bezel off (remvoe the top casign, then unclip th eront panel fro mthe underside of the machine and lift it forwards and off), Unplug the earth wire and the 10 way ribbon cable from the touchscreen PCB (insde the front panel you jsut removed) and take out the fixing screws. Clean out all the holes in the bezel and the touchscreen LED/phototransistor moutings. You can then reconenct the 10 way ribbon cable and see if it pases the test. If so, put it all back together. If not, then it's likely you have IR device problems on the touchscreen board. There is supposed to be a command you cna send ot the 8041 tht controls the keybaord and touchscreen to reprot which beams it thinks are blocked at power-on. The problem is that to do this you have to send other comamnds to disable the keybaord interface, etc. I gave up!. Beinng a hardware type, I wired up a dozen 4000-series CMOS ICs to make a device that would conenct ot the touchscreen PCB and display the status of all the IR beams on a couple of rows of LEDs. Using that on my fault touchscreen board, I found the dead IR pair in a few seconds. In theory you could use a 'scope to display the signals on the touchscreen interface (there are only 3 of them, clock, sync and data) and then see which beam(s) are responsible for the spurious pulse(s). Let me know if you want to do this and I can dig out the details of the interface. -tony

It will hopefully turn up as I sort things out for the impending house move... Both my HP150s ahve internal printers, but I am pretty sure I have at least one spre unit. I think that's all you need to add the printer. It jsut slots in to the top case and you plug the ribbon cable in. It prints on thermal fax paper (can you still get that?) . [Touchscreen fault] What a freidn of mine calls 'A can of pneumatic fluid' :-) Yes. As you doubtless know, the touchscreen works by sending IR light beams across the front of the CR, and detecting if any of those beams are broken by a finger touching the screen. A valid touch is one or 2 adjacent X-beams broken AND 1 or 2 adjacent Y beams broken. At pwoer on, it checks that all beams are gettign there. So a bit of dirt down one of the holes will cause an error. There was an HP kit of IR-trnasparent plastic shields to fit into the bezel, by all accounts it didn't help much. On one of my units, there wa a fialed IR device (I forget if it was an LED or phototranssitor. Replacing it was not ahrd... The main problem with these Sony drives is that the grease that lubricates the eject linkages goes hard, and the leankages stick. This means the disk holder doesn't latch properly when you eject a disk. On a dobble-head drive, this is a big broblem becuase the upper head will catch in the diusk shutter and get damaged. Single head drives don't have an upper head, and dmaage to the pressure pad is a lot easier to put right (if ti occurs). Baically, you have to remove the drives from the 1921 chassis (I think it's 3 screws each, and a couple of cables), then take off the drive logic board (3 scres and lots of connectors), the front panel (2 screws), the eject damper (1 screw), the head load solenoid bracket (2 more screws) and finally the disk holder (4 screws. You can then at lease separate the holder intothe 3 main aprts (holder, and the 2 side panels) buyt rmeovign a screw and some E-circlps. I have found 2 designs. the older one will comea apert almost completely, the levers are held on by circlips. The later one has thigns riveted in place. With the fomer, take it apart and clean all the bits with propan-2-ol. With the later, unhook the springs, saak the parts (particularly the right hand side plate) in propan-2-ol, work the levers back and forth and wipe off the grease as it emerges. I find theres;' no real need to put any grease back on these parts. With the amount of use they are likely to get, they are not gonin to wear out. There are few pictures in my Flickr account (tony_duell) of taking apart a double-head drive. THe single-head one is very similar. -tony

elsewhere, to this? Never mind, I realised I was trying to put it back in the wrong place... :-(

If they're the kind I think you people mean, I know someone who calls them "jesus clips" because, as he described it, you try to take one off and struggle and eventually it comes free - and goes *ping!* across the room and you go "jeeesus!!". /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

across Strangely, I find removing them really easy, and they never fly across the room. I just put my finger over them as I kind of twist them out with a small screw driver. Regards Rob

Excellent! They used ot be very easy to find becuase a lot of test equipment had HPIB (GPIB, IEEE-488) ports. But they were never cheap. For a couple of devices (HP150 and HP9121) close together you will probslby get away with a couple of 24 pin Microribbon plugs crimped ot a bit of IDC ribbon cable. -tony

On Sun, 24 Nov 2013, Mouse wrote: Are the screws SAE or metric?

The cables I have do not look like the Wikipedia page picture; they have matte metal shells with black screws rather than black shells with metallic-appearing screws. The Wikipedia page does say that the connectors "are held in place by screws, either UTS (now largely obsolete) or metric M3.5?0.6 threads. By convention, metric screws are colored black, as the two threads do not mate.". I suspect the cables will work fine except for possible mechanical retention issues if the screws are wrong - in my experience they have notably low friction. I looked at my box of cables and it looked as though they were all HP-branded and marked 10833A, in case that helps; I didn't go through them carefully checking each one, but that is how all the cable ends in easy view were marked. The Wikipedia page also says One unusual feature of IEEE-488 connectors is they commonly use a "double-headed" design, with male on one side, and female on the other. This allows stacking connectors for easy daisy-chaining. I think all my cables match this description. /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

I suspect my cables are the designed-for-computer sort. Not only did I get them with computers, they look _ridiculously_ heavily shielded. Before I left Montreal, a friend was visiting and looking at that stuff. I have an HP-IB disk drive that holds about half a gig and weighs about half what I do; he looked at it and the cables and said it might be heavy, but when they nuke Montreal it's not going to even _notice_ the EMP. I think that was an exaggeration, but that's sure how they look. I do not, however, have any terminators, nor any indication that they might be necessary, nor even desirable. My cables are about the size of thicknet Ethernet cable (though much more flexible). /~\ The ASCII Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse at rodents-montreal.org / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B

metallic- will are I will see if I can work out what thread I have. Sounds like they will fit, but just may not stay on if the thread is not right. Regards Rob

Yes they are, HP always used the Amphenol connector for their HP-IB cables. Philips and Fluke used a DB25 (IRC) connecter for their implementation of the HP-IB bus (IEEE-488). Philips also made converters for DB to Amphenol. -Rik

They almost certainly are. They have plug-and-socket 24 pin microribbon conencotrs on each end so you can stack them. It';s certainly the same cable as I use with all my HPIB stuff, including 9000/200 machines. All HP150s will have the metric (M3.5) jackposts. I would be very suprised if anything you have has the older 6-32 UNC ones,though. So it should just plug straight in. As an asdie, if anyone has a pair of the jackscrews (used on teh cables) with 6-32 UNC threads I am looking for a pair. My HP59309 clock has the older jackposts. Yes, I could trivially repalce them, but I would like to keep it original, so I would modif a cable to work with that alone. -tony

On 11/24/2013 06:46 PM, Mouse wrote: Hmmm, I have some jackposts that are M3.5 female, but 6-32 (or maybe 4-40, I don't recall) on the male (chassis) end. On the small amount of HPIB/GPIB stuff I have, I just use ribbon cable and 24 position IDC connectors. Works fine (you just can't stack them). --Chuck

It is. The original standard was to use 6-32 UNC. It was changed to be M3.5. HP sold updating kitw ofr instuments (a pair of jackposts) and calbes (a pair of jckscrews). I have an early serial number HP59405 -- the HPIB interface for the HP9830, and one of the fisst HPIB interaces ever. Annoyingly it has been updated... I wish it was totally originl, but... Lat night I looked at my HP150s. Oddly, the jackposts on the HPIB connector are nickel finsih.But they are certianly M3.5 thread. I wouldn;t worry about it. The chances of findign 6-32 jackposts on an HP150 are very remote. -tony