Navtel 9460 Protocol Analyzer info?

[Tony Duell]

> Someday I'll pick up a "datascope" (aka serial protocol analyzer) cheap. I 
> did a lot of serial communications programming in a prior life, and 
> absolutely lived with a datascope. Not sure of the brand, but I remember is 
> was blue. No keyboard in the real sense, but a data entry pad on the front. 
> It was the most incredibly useful thing... you could program it to watch for 
> a particular sequence of ascii characters, then start capturing data. One 
> button would flip the display between ascii/ebcdic, hex, binary.. and it had 
> a dual display mode where it showed transmit on top of the line and receive 
> on the bottom of the line. It was a godsend. It had a breakout box built 
> into it, could buffer to floppy, etc. It could also do sync & async.

I haev a Tekky 835 which does most of what you describe. It only has a 
single-line display, but as you scroll through the captured text, a 
status LED shows whether the character came from the DTE or DCE. This 
device can also simulate a DCE or DTE, so you can use it for testing 
serial peripherals on their own.

I also have a crazy decvice called a 'Ferret'. It's built into an ABS 
case, a bit like one of those attache' cases. It combines the functions 
of a breakout box, protocol analyser (but only for async data I think), 
RS232 - current loop converter (and you can have different baud rates on 
the 2 sides!), RS232 - centronics converter (I think it does dataproducts 
parallel too), perallel printer tester (in other words you can send 
messages to a Centronics printer), RS232 printer (there's a little 
built-in strip printer, like the one in an Epson HX20), EPROM programmer 
(!), you can even download and run programs on the built-in Z80 
processor. There;'s even a cassstte interface to save the contents of 
user memory. I really must dig it out and get it going...

-tony