I recently bought what I thought was going to be an HP82164a hpil-rs232 unit.
It actually turned out to be a similar device but made by a company called "firmware specialists".
I'm looking for a manual or any information at all for that matter.
Thanks,
Andy
I have one called 'Maxum HP-IL converter' made by Federal Products corp., a measurement instruments company which is a division of Esterline, which is an aerospace company. I also can't find any specific information on it. What does yours look like? Mine is enclosed in a heavy gauge steel box meausuring 3 1/8" X 6 5/8" X 1 3/16"(8cm X 17cm X 3cm) with a baked on two tone gray finish and a 6 pin data cable, a three pin 'remote switch' connector and a 4 pin power connector.
there are four screw-mounted rubber feet on the bottom and a single red LED on the top. My theory is that these were made by several companies in the 1980's either as 'in-house second sources' to the HP product or as 'ruggedized' versions for the industrial market. Either way, it was never a mainstream product and it is now a technological artifact so digging up specifics will probably be difficult. I think the best way to proceed is to get the documentation for the HP product and try to derive the rest from there.
"I think the best way to proceed is to get the documentation for the HP product and try to derive the rest from there."
I was going to suggest that. I am familiar with the HP HPIL/HPIB interface and because both sides are addressable, the protocol is a little complicated. Since RS-232 is not addressable, it should be a little easier to do on the HP model and hopefully to figure out on another model. I have an old non-HP HPIB/RS-232 interface I want to figure out someday. I suspect mine might be a one-way convertor to allow a computer with only a serial port to control an HPIB printer or plotter in "listen only" mode, or to input data from an HPIB instrument in "talk only" mode. I have a non-HP multimeter like this - the mode and range have to be set manually, the HPIB only sends readings.