Peter,
Are you dealing with SS80 or CS80? The title says SS-80 but the text says CS-80.
Which model 9133 are you using? Do you know what kind of system it was previously used on?
Bob Shannon, Steve Robertson and a couple of others have done a LOT of work figuring out the CS-80 protocall so that they can write drivers for use with the HP 1000. Apparently there's a lot more to it than what's shown in the instruction manual.
FYI at one time HP made a kit that had a 8 bit ISA HP-IB card along with software and docs to let you use one of the HP drives on a PC. I used to have one but don't remember the exact name or model. I don't know if it was capable of reading HP data from a drive or not but it's a possibility.
>With the data clocks off the drive, I'm having a few problems working out
>the actual format that HP use to record files on the disk.
If the drive came from a 9000 200 computer, it could be LIF or HFS. HP used both. To make matter worse there are a LOT of different LIF formats. I used to have a document from HP that described some of the different LIF formats that were used just on their instruments and there were about two dozen different formats as I recall. And that did not include the formats used on the various computers!
Joe
At 09:23 PM 4/15/03 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I have an HP 9133 HDD that I'm going to have to re-format (for an HP based
>measuring system).
>
>The drive already has quite a lot of software on it that it seems a shame to
>destroy.
>
>I've stuck a bus analyser on the drive and had a quick look at the data
>passing back and forth between a controller and it. I think that I can
>control the drive OK (using cs80 protocol) from a PC with HPIB controller
>card - i.e. I can identify the drive, check block sizes and pull data off or
>write data to the drive.
>
>It strikes me that an application that enables the information on a cs/80
>drive to be pulled onto a PC, backed-up on another format (e.g. CD ROM) and
>then written back to the cs80 drive would be useful - does such an
>application already exist?
>
>With the data clocks off the drive, I'm having a few problems working out
>the actual format that HP use to record files on the disk.
>
>It looks as though the first block on the disk (block 0) contains
>information about the volume label, number of blocks available, number of
>blocks allocated etc. (and I assume the length of the catalog).
>
>The next few blocks seem to contain the catalog information itself - file
>names, start locations lengths, file types etc.
>
>Does anyone have access to details of the format that HP use to store files
>on cs80 protocol disks/tapes?
>
>(I already have a document 'cs/80 instruction set' dated March 1983 that has
>proved invaluable in understanding the messages between the controller and
>disk drive.)
>
>Any help much appreciated.
>
>Cheers
>
>Peter Brown
>
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Received on Tue Apr 15 2003 - 19:38:00 BST