Query re. HP 82973A HP-IL Interface card and 82161A Digital Cassette Drive

[John AS (UK)]

Hi,

I'm currently reading the manual for the 82973A HP-IL Interface card (ISA bus card), it describes the HPIL.SYS driver as follows:

In CONFIG.SYS enter the line:

       DEVICE = HPIL.SYS 



You can use HP-IL peripherals as you would other devices connected to your

 IBM PC computer. The following table lists the names that your IBM PC

 recognizes and their corresponding devices on the loop.

 

        Name                       Device

        ---------------------------------------------------------------------

        HPILPRN                    The first printer on HP-IL.

        HPILPLT                    HP 7470A Graphics Plotter (option 003).

        Drives C to J (D to K)     Disc drives or HP 82161A Digital Cassette

                                   Drive. (Drives D to K for the IBM XT.)

I can understand that a 9114A/B disk drive would appear as a MSDOS drive letter, and the manual says these can either be formatted by an HP-110 or by usng the HPILFOR utility on a PC with the 82973A. But can you actually format a cassette tape as an MSDOS drive (ie with a FAT), either on an HP-110 or via the 82973A?

I thought from earlier forum posts that the 82161A only understood Filbert protocol, and the HP-110 only understood SS-80 protocol, so the two were incompatible (without any additional software!) I would also be surprised if HPIL.SYS provides support for the Filbert protocol.

Regards,

John

[Egan Ford]

I have no idea, but I do have all the necessary parts. I can try this weekend perhaps.

What is your intended use? Are you trying to exchange data with the HP-110?

[John AS (UK)]

Quote:

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I have no idea, but I do have all the necessary parts. I can try this weekend perhaps.

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Thanks, that would be very helpful.

Quote:

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What is your intended use? Are you trying to exchange data with the HP-110?

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Ongoing quest of a friend to retrieve files off his cassette drive, and also I am curious if I am understanding the manual correctly.

Regards,

John

[Egan Ford]

I tried this AM. No luck.

With EMU71/EMU41/FreeDOS I can format, read, and write to both my 9114B and 82161A.

If I add DEVICE=HPIL.SYS to my CONFIG.SYS and reboot, then both drives fire up and are assigned drive letters. If I try to access the drive letter I get an error.

dir e:

Error reading from drive E: DOS area: unknown unit for driver

(A)bort, (I)gnore, (R)etry, (F)ail?

If I try to format I get:

hpilfor e: (or hpilfor e: /w)

(I hear the drive)

Press any key to begin formatting E:

Media Format Error.

Perhaps its FreeDOS or that I am running DOS under DOSEMU. I guess I need to try MS-DOS.

[Egan Ford]

Just tried DOS 3.3 on bare-metal. Same errors. Out of ideas.

[Egan Ford]

Quote:

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        Drives C to J (D to K)     Disc drives or HP 82161A Digital Cassette

                                   Drive. (Drives D to K for the IBM XT.)

---

Hmmm... my docs do not state 82161A. Can you send me your software? Or a URL?

[John AS (UK)]

Quote:

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Hmmm... my docs do not state 82161A. Can you send me your software? Or a URL?

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I was referring to copy of HP 82973 manual from a MoHPC CD3 from a few years ago (a .txt file). For the software I would refer you to 'the other HP museum'.

I guess HP found the error in the manual and removed it from later versions such as you have.

Thanks very much for trying,

Regards,

John

[Egan Ford]

Quote:

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'the other HP museum'.

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Same code as I have and that is available via ftp://hpmuseum.org. It would be nice to get the 1984 code to see if it works.

[John AS (UK)]

Quote:

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Same code as I have and that is available via ftp://hpmuseum.org. It would be nice to get the 1984 code to see if it works.

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Thanks for the link. I've found the newer version of the HP 82973A manual you referred to:

ftp://hpmuseum.org/lif/hplink/manual.txt

so quite a few changes from the earlier version, no mention of the 82161A Digital Cassette Drive.

Nice too to find a description of the DOS INT 54 service:

ftp://hpmuseum.org/lif/hplink/int54h.doc

used to send/receive data over the 82973A.

Thanks again for your help,

Regards,

John

Edited: 12 Mar 2010, 8:58 a.m.