Seeking software for SGI/Sun dial box (was Re: IBM 6094-010 "Dials" protocol?)

[Glen Slick]

On Sun, Apr 8, 2018 at 2:01 PM, Ethan Dicks via cctalk
<cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 25, 2018 at 3:48 PM, Ethan Dicks <ethan.dicks at gmail.com> wrote:
>> SN-921
>>   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Sgi_dialbox_sn-921_front.jpg
>>
>> DANAHER CONTROLS Dials DLS80-1022
>>   https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/SGI_dialbox_DLS80-1022_front.jpg
>
>>>>> https://github.com/hanshuebner/sgi-dialbox-usb/blob/master/dialbox.py
>>
>> I'm going to test this code out when I have a dialbox in hand.
>
> I have now tried this and am not having success.  I have a traffic
> light on the serial cable and I know I'm getting chars out of the host
> and that I don't have TxD and RxD swapped.  I'm not seeing any
> responses from the dial box and the python script does all the
> initialization and just sits there.  Frobbing the knobs produces no
> blinks on the traffic light and no text from the script.

What version of the dial box do you have? I have an HP A4362A dial box
which looks identical to the pictures of the DLS80-1022 dial box.

I just hooked up the HP A4362A dial box to a PC serial port with the
Y-cable and the +5,+12,-12 AC adapter and I get 9600,N,8,1 dial
rotation data from the dial box as soon as it is powered on without
needing to send any commands to the dial box first.

It appears that the data format is three bytes per dial rotation
report. The first byte is the dial number, 0x80 through 0x87. The next
two bytes are the twos-complement rotation count, MSB first,
counter-clockwise negative, clockwise positive.