HP9831 operating manual

[Tony Duell]

> >>From what I've read elsewhere (particularly on http://www.hpmuseum.net), 
> >the 9896 was a desk with a 9831 on top and a couple of 9885 8" drives in 
> >the pedestal.
> 
>    I wonder if they used the "combining stand" to put them together?

Not as far as I know. There's some info on that site I mentioned, I think 
under the documentation for the 9825. There's an installation/service 
manual, but the only 'service' instructions are for the desk, the only 
schemaitc is the AC power distribution. Still, it might give you some idea.

> That's what they did with the (I think) 9830 and 9866 printer. I actually
> found one of the "combining stands". It's just a C-shapped metal frame like

Odd... The 9866 fits nicely on top of the 9830, it looks as though it was 
designed to. Maybe the stand you have is to put the 9866 onto a 9831 
(this has no built-in printer, unlike a 9825, since a 16 character wide 
strip printer is not a lot of use for BASIC).

> a printer stand except that it fits over the calculator and hold the
> printer. It's nothing real special but it is an interesting accessory.
> 
> >
> >I can look into getting a friend to scan it sometime. It's a fairly thick 
> >manual, and I don't want to lend it out (since it's not exactly common), 
> 
>    I understand that! I was very hestitant to ship my HP books to Al for
> scanning. I seriously doubt I would have if it involved shipping them
> across the pond. Hopefully someone in the UK can scan them and post them
> somewhere on the net.

I have a friend at HPCC who will normally scan HP-related stuff for me. I 
will ask him. Somehow it will get done.

>     Yeap! I have a pile of 9885M and a couple of 9885S. But I've never
> tried to hook one up and use it. I think Steve Robertson has. i should ask
> him what success he's had with them. FWIW a LOT of the 9825s that I've
> found have included 9885 drives. I remember a couple of years ago I found
> SEVEN test stations that all had HP 9825Ts, 9885s, I/O Expanders, HP-IB
> interfaces, RTC clocks and several other interfaces. That was a nice haul!

My 9825 came with one of the 9885Ms, the 98032 to drive it, a 98034 
(HPIB) and 98035 (clock). I got some more interfaces, including a 98036 
(RS232/current loop) with the 9831. In fact I nearly didn't rescue that 
9831, it was in a skip (dumpster) that I was pulling HP stuff out of, it 
looked like another 9825 which I didn't particularly want. But it had a 
couple of interfaces still in it, I decided to grab those, pulled the 
machine out to get them and then saw it wasn't a 9825. I had no idea what 
a 9831 was, but it was HP so I got it...

A couple of years back I was given a well-loaded 9845B. It has the 
high-speed language processor, the enhanced mono graphics monitor, etc). 
And it came with the I/O expander, loads of interfaces (parallel, clock, 
HPIB, serial), a 9885M and a 9885S. Nice haul... Even nicer was the fact 
that his has a 3rd party ROM in one of the ROM drawers which, I think, 
supports HPIB disks. And that ROM module, unlike the HP ones, is not a 
custom hybrid cirucit, it's a PCB with a couple of EPROMs on one side and 
some smaller chips (2 latches and an address decoder PROM) on the other. 
Again it's useful to see how to link normal EPROMs to the memory bus.

> >As I understand it (from the 98032 operating/service manual), the 
> >modifications consisted of the correct connector for the peripheral, the 
> >connections of the 98032 cable to that connector, a set of soldered links 
> >on the cable connector PCB in the rear shell of the 98032 itself and 
> >possibly a capacitor on that PCB to slow down the handshake. The 2 main 
> >boards in the 98032 were not changed.
> 
>     That's my understanding as well. But there are a lot of jumpers in the
> interfaces. Plus the wiring and connectors are unique so that's going to
> make it impossible to duplicate without a good set of docs.

Sure. What I meant by my comment was that if you had those docs, it would
be fairly easy to configure any 98032 for any Option. There would be no
PCB modes, chip changes, or anything like that.  And 98032s are not that
rare (I must have almost a dozen of them now). 


-tony