HP Integral questions

From: Tony Duell <ard_at_p850ug1.demon.co.uk>
Date: Wed Aug 6 17:02:00 2003

> Hi,
> > 1) What's the space on top, under the printer cover, for? I've found the
>
> I've only seen it used for mouse/cable storage.

After I sent that message, I found a mention of it in the 'cartoon strip'
at the start of the user manual. It appears you can keep a few floppies
and the mains lead there.

However, it's very close to the paper feed stepper, so I'd not want to
keep floppies there. And a UK mains lead doesn't really fit (the 13A
BS1363 plug is large). Also, I tend to have plenty of mains leads on the
bench anyway.

So I keep the mosue there -- it fits almost perfectly...

> > 4) A really long shot, but that expansion unit card is taking up a slot
> > that could be better used for something else. So does anyone know where I
> > might find a serial card (either RS232 or current loop, preferably the
> > former) or a GPIO card?
>
> I've seen serial cards (I think), and a combo SCSI/serial card from a
> third party ... I'll try to find the info.

I saw a photo on a web page of a combined serial and memory card. It
looked to be 2 stacked PCBs with the component sides facing each other.

I also saw a photo of the HP serial card. It seems to use a 68681 serial
chip and some TTL. Looks possible to reproduce if I could figure out the
addressing and what the config and ID registers would have to be like.
However, I'd rather find a ready-made card (preferably HP)...

HP made at least 3 serial cards. One was RS232, another was current loop,
and the third was a 300/1200 bps modem. THe last is not particularly
useful (but would, I guess, be better than nothing), the RS232 one is
clearly the most desirable...

>
> > I also think I need a hard disk. I have whichever version of the 9133 is
> > around 20Mbytes here, which I believe should work. However, I have
> > questions about that too
>
> I could trade a hard drive for the 82904 card :)

I've hooked up the 9133, works great. So I don't need another hard disk
unit. And with my luck, as soon as I get rid of the 82904 card, somebody
will give me an expansion unit. So I am hanging on to that card for the
moment :-)

One thing worries me -- replacing the hard disk unit in the 9133. It's
clearly a standard ST225 drive. But if I replace it with such a drive
from the 'PC bits' pile, the 9133 gives a fault indication. Clearly the
drive needs to be low-level formatted. Anyone know how to do that? Is
there a routine for that in the 9133 ROMs? (maybe one of the self-tests?)

I don't need to replace the hard disk at the moment, but (a) it might
fail one day and (b) I have a second 9133 which has a lot of MS-DOS
software for theHP150 on the hard disk. I might need more storage on the
Integral, in which case being able to swap out the drive in the second
unit would save me a lot of floppy-shuffling....

-tony
Received on Wed Aug 06 2003 - 17:02:00 BST