PIL Box - communication with an external HP71B

[Roland Storz]

Hello,
since a couples of years I did use the ISA HPIL board, however, since I was trying to switch to PIL Box I have to admit I’m somehow lost (frankly speaking I do not feel like an HPIL expert).

I do hope somebody could briefly describe his procedure how to exchange files from the Emu71 HDRIVE1 to a real HP71B and backwards?

My “simple” environment looks as follows:
Emu71 (latest version), PIL Box (via COM2), ILPer (via COM2), real HP71B

FTDI driver installed (driver setup OK), ILCtrl shows Device ID (1): HP71, ILper shows my “hdrive1.dat” in Mass Storage LIF file: (nothing else, no error message)

In the past I used the following procedure, which worked perfectly:

- communication with an external HP-71B
To exchange program and data files with an external HP-71B, just make it a device by typing
CONTROL OFF on the HP-71B. Then do RESTORE IO on Emu71.
You can now copy files between Emu71 and HP-71B.
Emu71 to HP-71B:
do 'COPY :LOOP' on the HP-71B
do 'COPY file TO :HP71' on Emu71
HP-71B to Emu71:
do 'COPY file TO :LOOP' on the HP-71B
do 'COPY :HP71' on Emu71

I would be very grateful for any help,
Many thanks in advance,
Roland,

[Raymond Del Tondo]

IIRC, you have to use the HDRIVE as buffer when using the PIL box.

Thus, a COPY file TO :TAPE (or whatever addr the HDRIVE is) should work;-)

However what does the doc say?

HTH

Raymond

[Roland Storz]

Raymond, thanks for the advice, I will try tonight,

by the way, which doc are you refering to, is there anything available to look at?

Thanks again, Roland

[Roland Storz]

Raymond,

the COPY to :TAPE works fine, however, to copy the file to :HP71 does not work,
on my real HP71b I got: PILERR: File not found

Do you have any idea, what I could try to overcome

Thanks in advance, Roland

[J-F Garnier]

Roland, in case you didn't solve the problem yet: latest Emu71 version should work with the PILBox as with the HPIL ISA board, however it may fail on some systems (== not 100% reliable).

My recommended method for reliable communication between Emu71 and HP71 with the PILBox is to use the IL-Per software (available on my PIL-Box page): do not declare any XIL in Emu71.ini and use IL-Per as a gateway by sharing the hdrive1.dat file: You can now copy files between Emu71 and HP-71B. Do 'COPY file TO :HDRIVE1' on the one side, then do 'COPY file:HDRIVE1' on the other side. Fast and efficient.

J-F