How to move lexfiles from PC to 71 w/o HP-IL?

[Joe Horn]

Help, please. If I don't have a PC-to-IL converter or card, how can I take HP-71 lex files in binary form on my PC's hard disk, and get them into an HP-71?

Back in the 71's heyday, a popular method for transferring lexfiles was in a kind of hex dump with checksums at the end of each line or at the end of the entire dump. But the conversion from binary to hex dump was also done on the HP-71. Is there a PC utility that converts lexfiles in binary form into hex dumps that can be typed into the HP-71 and converted there?

I'd use LIF2DOS or LIFUTIL if I could, but all my LIF disks are apparently unreadable. :-( So I'm stuck with the binaries on my PC's hard drive.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer in this regard.

FWIW, my ancient collection of HP-71 lexfiles is now available online:

• Brief descriptions of the most popular lexfiles: http://holyjoe.net/HP71/lexlist.htm
  
• Zipfile of complete lexfile collection (binaries): http://holyjoe.net/HP71/lexfiles.zip
  
• Zipfile of all the related text files (docs and/or source code): http://holyjoe.net/HP71/textfiles.zip

-Joe-

[Marcus von Cube, Germany]

The easiest way is still to use a PILBox by J.-F. Garnier.

[Jerry Raia]

I still cant get that to work

[Michael Lopez]

Hi Joe,

I have a PilBox & happy to transfer the lexfiles you nominate to one of my HP71 then convert into Hex dumps. As I haven't converted files into Hex before, you will however need to guide me on how to do that.

Can then send you the files in a form that you can print out.

Just let me know via the email address in my profile.

Cheers,

Michael

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

Do you have HP-IL on the 71 and a 9114? I did successfully create diskettes from the images on the museum's ftp site. I used Tony Duell's utilities that run on Linux and you need a real hardware diskette drive, I don't think a USB diskette will work. I keep some old PCs around just for things like this. If you are really stuck I could probably create diskettes for you.

Edit to fix unfortunate typo....

Edited: 12 Oct 2013, 11:26 a.m.

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

Thanks for pointing out that your collection is available on you site. I have downloaded it and have managed to get them into a linkplus virtual disk, however I did find that 5 files in the set have invalid file types they are AUTODIS, DRIVELEX, JPCLEX, REPENT, and VIRUS. The file type field in these files is 0x00FF instead of 0xE208. LIFUTIL did not care but the 71B did.

[Joe Horn]

Thanks, Paul. Regarding those invalid files: are the versions of them on the museum's ftp site valid? (I didn't know about that ftp site before... what a treasure trove of goodies!)

I have three 71's w/ IL, and two 9114B drives, but no way to power the drives, since the battery packs are missing, and I have no "cheater cord" to supply DC directly to the battery terminals. I have several boxes full of LIF disks... they MIGHT be readable by a 9114, but they are seen as unformatted by LIFUTIL running under Windows 7 and a USB floppy drive.

Somebody from the old PPC gang here in SoCal might have 9114 cheater cords & transformers for loan, sale, or trade. I'll ask around.

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

I could only find copies of JPCLEX and DRIVELEX on the ftp site diskettes and yes they are correct. For the files that have invalid file types on the DOS side I edited the binary file to put in the correct file type and copied them to a diskette and loaded them on a 71B and it did not blow up, so I guess the 71 thinks they are good lex files.

Yes there is a lot of potentially good stuff on the ftp images, however a lot of it is undocumented unfortunately. Do you know of any good tools to explore lex files? What would be useful is something that would list the keywords and what they expect for parameters. On my 75s I use a LEX called help which gives this information however it wants to traverse the entire lex chain instead of just showing me the lex I am interested in, but still it is helpful. Once I know what the keywords are and the parameters they expect I can play with them to figure out how they work.

I don't think that you will get anywhere with LIFUTIL and a modern windows PC or a USB floppy I am surprised it even tried to read the diskettes, I would have expected LIFUTIL to be talking directly to the diskette hardware.

None of my 9114Bs have battery packs. I made up short cables that fit onto the battery connector and on the other end I have a connector suitable for the power supply I am using, which is a 2500mA adjustable wall wart. They will run at 6V however I have mine set to 7.5V and have had no problems. If you cannot find anything to power your 9114s let me know and I will make you one, I hate to see you with 9114s that you cannot use.

[Joe Horn]

Quote:

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None of my 9114Bs have battery packs. I made up short cables that fit onto the battery connector and on the other end I have a connector suitable for the power supply I am using, which is a 2500mA adjustable wall wart. They will run at 6V however I have mine set to 7.5V and have had no problems. If you cannot find anything to power your 9114s let me know and I will make you one, I hate to see you with 9114s that you cannot use.

---

Thanks for the generous offer, Paul, but Richard Nelson just let me know that he'll be sending me one of his 9114 power supplies (9V, but they've always worked just fine). It'll be fun to fire up these old 9114's after so many years of disuse!

[Christoph Giesselink]

I only can confirm Marcus earlier suggestion, use or in your case, buy a PILBox from J.-F. Garnier. This is an investment into the future.

Years ago I thought also about buying a 9114 for my collection and for playing around with my real 41 and 71 calculators. But therefore you need room in a cabinet and saving data on these disks isn't really safe as well. So I decided, the best way is using JFG's PILBox and ILper and save the money for the 9114.

With the lastest version of ILper available at my homepage http://hp.giesselink.com/hpil.htm and a PILBox you can do things you haven't dreamed years ago.

Suggestion 1: Real 71B, real 9114, PILBox and ILper

Suggestion 2: Emu71/Win with 1 HPIL module, ILPilpox with PILBox, real 9114 and ILper

Suggestion 3 (more sophisticated by using 2 HPIL adapters): Emu71/Win with 2 HPIL modules, ILPilpox with PILBox on one loop, real 9114, and ILper on the 2nd loop

Of course you can do that also with real 71B and if you have one of these rare Dual HPIL adapters and 2 HPIL modules.

The simplest combination for loading LIF files from the PC hard disk into a real 71B is nowadays still the PILBox with ILper on the PC. This is also IMHO the best solution for the 41.