Benson 1645 plotter experience?

From: Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk_at_yahoo.co.uk>
Date: Sun Jun 13 05:38:36 2004

Anyone ever used a Benson 1645-R plotter?

We dragged one out of store at the museum the other day. It does its
test plot fine, and we look to have got a terminal talking to it as far
as handshaking and sending characters via the SA interface.

It's not responding to HPGL commands at all though - in fact it's not
responding to anything sent down the serial line, other than the
handshaking being ok.

We're using the 'SA' interface which has one RS232 port and one unknown
9 pin port.

We also have an 'SW' interface module, which has two ports on it - one
male and one female. According to the (nearly useless) documentation we
have, one is for a terminal and one for a host computer - but it doesn't
explain the point of that (i.e. whether we should be trying to drive the
thing from the terminal port or the host port).

Nor does it explain what the difference between 'modem' and 'hardware'
connections are (surely the plotter knows nothing of what's actually
connected to its interfaces and doesn't care), what the difference is
between local and remote mode (this is different between manual and auto
mode), what the difference is between normal and emulate mode (emulate
what? Selection of Benson or one of various HP plotter types is a
seperate menu option, so I don't think it's to do with Benson/HPGL
protocol emulation)

Nor do the docs say what the difference is between the flow control
options on the SW interface (partly why we gave up and started using the
SA one) - there's a choice of CTS1, CTS2, then XON 1-4. How those map to
the real world we don't know.

Grumble grumble. Anyone know how to kick the thing into HPGL emulation
mode so we can actually talk to it?

cheers

Jules
Received on Sun Jun 13 2004 - 05:38:36 BST