Hook-µP software by Rush Systems

[Lute Kamstra]

Hello,

I recently bought an old second-hand Hook-µP by Rush Systems. It's a device that you can connect to a computer via RS-232 and that captures the IR beam of for example a HP 28. I understand that there is accompanying software that needs to be installed on the PC end in order to save the resulting data to a text file. Unfortunately, I don't have the software. I tried googling without success. Does anyone here have an idea how I can obtain of copy of the Hook-µP software?

[Raymond Del Tondo]

Hello,

did you try HyperTerminal or a similar software?

[Eric Smith]

You need specific software. The only thing in the Hook-up is the photodectector and amplifier; it outputs the demodulated signal, and isn't compatible with normal asynchronous serial data. The software has to bit-bang the decoding from one of the handshake lines. It is very sensitive to processor speed, and probably won't work on any PC made in the last 20 years.

[Lute Kamstra]

Thanks for responding. So without the software and an old PC or luck with emulation, I merely have a fancy acrylic calculator stand....with a cable. Ah well, maybe I'll find the software sometime.

[Eric Smith]

You could try Mark Adler's HPREAD, supplied as C source code. It defaults to assuming that the demodulator is connected to a pin of a parallel printer port, but there are command line arguments to specify the part number and bit position, so it should work with a serial handshake line if you can identify the right port and bit.

Mark wrote HPREAD to use a system timer, so it should work even on really fast systems. However, it won't work on Windows, so you'll have to boot DOS to use it.

[Lute Kamstra]

Thanks for the tip. I'll give it a try.

Lute