Interfacing HP82161A to HP-85

[Johnsay]

Hi All:
I'm attempting to interface an HP 82161A HP-IL cassette drive to a an HP-85B. This is being attempted via the HP-IB card in the HP-85 working through the HP 82169 HP-IL/HP-IB interface.
The system has been verified to work with an HP-IL printer.
Is it even possible to do mass storage operations with this setup? Tape operations seem slaved to the unit in the '85 and none of the tricks for redirecting I/O seem to work.
Thanks
Johnsay

[Andre Koppel]

Very long time ago (20 years) we have tried this. No way, interfacing and command language of an HP-IL Diskdrive is completely different from the GPIB massstorages like 9121.
Even if you have installed the ROMs into the HP85, you are not able to access the IL disk like a GPIB disk.
The only way is to access the IL disk on a low level with direct IL programming (reading and writing sectors).