Data transfer from 9895 8 inch floppy

[Wilbert Wilson]

Hopefully someone can help me with this.I have several 8 inch inch floppy disk and would like to transfer the data and program files from the 8 inch media to a media able to be read by a PC. The HP9895A disk drive is connected to a HP9835A desktop computer.

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks

Wilbert Wilson
email Wilbert_Wilson@Teledyne.com

[Vassilis Prevelakis]

Wilbert Wilson wrote:

> Hopefully someone can help me with this.I have several 8 inch inch

> floppy disk and would like to transfer the data and program files

> from the 8 inch media to a media able to be read by a PC. The

> HP9895A disk drive is connected to a HP9835A desktop computer.

First WOW! I really would like to get my hands on such a machine.

Now a couple of assumptions I need to make:

1. The HP9895A and HP9835A are operational.

2. You want to transer the programs and data so that you can port the applications to a new computer.

3. The HP9835A has a working HP-IB interface (it should to be able to talk to the HP9895A).

-------

Given the above, you'd be better off sending everything as ASCII over HP-IB, rather than getting the stuff off the floppies.
This is because you'd then have to decode the info inside the retrieved files. This would involve de-tokenizing the BASIC programs
and reverse engineering the structure of the data files, so that you can extract the data.

One easy way to get your HP9835A to send the programs and data as
ASCII is to set up an HP-IB "printer" and then use the combination
of your HP9895A and HP9835A to "print" the programs and data to the
HP-IB "printer". Since I have these equipement handy, I'd use the
HP82164A HP-IL/RS-232 Interface connected to the serial port of my
PC (running, say, kermit to pick up the data received over the
serial link). Note that the HP82164A is an HP-IL device, so I'd
use the HP82169A HP-IL/HP-IB Interface to link my HP-IB equiped
computer to the HP82164A.

+---------+        +----------+        +----------+       +--------+

| HP9835A +--------+ HP82169A +--------+ HP82164A +-------+   PC   |

+---------+        +----------+        +----------+       +--------+

            HP-IB               HP-IL               RS/232

-------

Alternatively, if you happen to have an HP-IB ISA or PCI card for your PC, you may want to read the

"[3] Transferring Files Over HP-IB"

section of this article found at:

http://www.series80.org/Articles/xfer-to-dos.txt

Regards

**vp

Edited: 17 May 2007, 11:32 p.m.