GOOD hamfest!

From: Joe <rigdonj_at_intellistar.net>
Date: Mon Sep 13 08:09:09 1999

Tony,

At 07:21 PM 9/12/99 +0100, you wrote:
>> Ahh, I've got a 3468 as well. What a great multimeter! HP-IL is *cool*.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>I'll go along with that. It was/is a very well-desinged interface. At a
>high level it looks remarkably like HPIB/IEEE488 (to the extent that
>there's an HP interface -- the 82169 IIRC -- that transparently links
>HPIB devices to an HPIL controller or HPIL devices to an HPIB
>controller). The low level (I have the specs somewhere) is pretty simple
>as well...

   The best (only?) low level reference to HP_IL is "The HP-IL System: An
Introductory Guide to the Hewlett-Packard Interface Loop" by Kane, Harper
and Ushijima published by Osbourne/McGraw Hill. It is (was?) available
through any book store. It's manadatory if you're interested in low level
details about HP-IL.

>
>I just wish I had more of it. I've got it on some HP handhelds (71B,
>75C), on my 150, and that's about it. I've got some of the interfaces
>(RS232, HPIB, GPIO, Video), but no storage devices or printers (yet!!).

   ThinkJet printers and 9114 disk drives are fairly common if you look for
them. A lot of times you'll find them bundled with HP 110 Portable
computers. The set of all three shows up on E-bay fairly often and usually
sells for a reasonable price. I saw a ThinkJet, 9114 and 110 that sold at
the hamfest this weekend for $20 with a pile of HP-IL cables and several
manuals. Unfortunately it sold before I found it.


>
>
>I picked up an HP3421 (I think that's the number -- the data
>logger/multimeter thingy) with HPIL and HPIB on it for a couple of pounds
>at a factory sale aa few years back. Nobody else knew what it was. I
>didn't really know what it was, but it said HP, and looked interesting
>:-)... Still not figured out how to make it do something useful, but it
>returns a sane ID when probed on the HPIL so I guess it's doing something.
>

   The 3421 is really nice, doubley so both interfaces. You can use it on
HP 85s and the like with the HP-IB or on HP 71s and the other calculators
with the IL interface. If you got any of the optional plug in cards in the
back send me the part numbers off of them and I'll tell you what they are.
I have a manual for the 3421 if you need a copy.

   Joe
Received on Mon Sep 13 1999 - 08:09:09 BST