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Full Version: HP-IL I/F Card on a New(er) PC - Part IV - SUCCESS!!
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To All:

Complete success with some questions. Using EMU41 version 2.45, I can talk directly to my 9114B disk drive under XP on a P4 2.66 GHz PC. Here's what happened.

Last weekend, I started working on why running EMU41 version 2.40 booting from floppy would not see the 9114B. I swapped out the rev A 82973A I/F card with the rev C card and it worked. I found that I had set the I/O address on the rev A card to 3000 hex instead of 300 hex. With EMU41 now working under DOS, I knew all the hardware was functioning.

I installed UserPort on the P4 and EMU41 would NOT see my 9114B. UserPort can be installed two ways. You can run UserPort from a DOS prompt and manually start the UserPort.sys driver from the UserPort.exe frontend whenever you want. Or you can copy the UserPort.sys driver into c:\windows\windows32\drivers subdirectory and have it startup automatically whenever XP starts up. Christoph recommends the latter in his book but the manual loading of the driver works fine and I think is more secure since I can control when it starts.

Now, why didn't EMU41 not see my 9114B connected to the I/F card? It appears to be a version issue. I have three versions of EMU41 installed; 2.40, 2.45 and 2.47. I've been using 2.40 for all my testing but it can't see the external HP-IL loop. It does work correctly under DOS as this is the version I put on my floppy. Version 2.45 DOES see the external HP-IL loop and reads the disk catalog from the 9114B just fine. 2.47 also does not see the external HP-IL loop. Perhaps J-F can clarify the why.

One last question and I'm done. When I swapped the 82973A I/F card between my two PCs, I had something weird happen. The rev C version of the PC I/F card had been in my PII 233 MHz with its I/O address set to 300 hex and it booted fine. When I swapped in the rev A card and set its address to 300 hex, the PII 233 hung during booting. I changed it's address to 1700 hex and the PC now boots fine. Is there a hardware difference between the two revisions to account for this?

Thanks for the help and I look forward to your comments.

Gerry

Edited: 26 July 2009, 7:45 p.m.

EMU41 versions 2.40, and 2.47 do work correctly on the P4 PC under XP. All three versions see the external HP-IL loop and my 9114B disk drive. It was my error with commenting out the XIL 300 line in the respective ini files from all of my previous testing.

Sorry for the confusion.

Gerry

Edited: 26 July 2009, 9:51 p.m.

Hi Gerry,

Thanks for your extensive tests of Emu41 and the HPIL board with Win XP. I'm happy that you suceeded to make it work.

I confirm what you reported: when using XIL in case of missing HPIL board (or not at the right address), the HPIL loop can be completly disturbed including internal devices.

Emu41 normally bypasses the HPIL board in case the external loop is open to give access to internal devices, but doesn't check if the board is actually here. If the value returned at the supposed board address is such Emu41 thinks a frame is received, and if this frame is not the same that Emu41 sent (it is generally the case), then Emu41 considers the loop as completly broken.

J-F

Edited: 27 July 2009, 4:19 a.m.

Hi Gerry

GRATULATION - Now your system works :-)

Enjoy HP-41 and EMU41

best regards - Christoph

(author of the HP-41 Input/Output Board & IL2000 System Interface manual)