HP-IB Census

[Jim Battle]

Steve Robertson wrote:

> Hey guys,
> 
> I am compiling some information for a HP-IB KnowledgeBase article / FAQ
> and need some input. In order to focus my efforts and get the maximum
> value from the KB, I need to know what specific information should be
> included in the KB/FAQ. Some of the topics I am considering are:
>  
> * Introduction / Tutorial  - Basic overview of the protocol
> * Protocols - HP-IB, GPIB, SICL, IEEE-488, etc... 
> * Characteristics - Electrical and physical characteristics
> * Instruments - Talking to instruments
> * Bus Analyzers - IE HP59401A
> * CS-80 disks - The CS-80 / SS-80 protocols
> * Programming - Linux, HP-UX, C, assembler, other
> 
> So... I'd like to hear from anyone that is interested in HP-IB as to
> what they would like to see in the KB. Please reply to the cctech list
> or directly to me at steerex[at]mindspring[dot]com.

Steve,

I'd say the best use of your time would be to

(1) collect the best existing articles on the subjects above and provide 
an overview and pointers to the articles.  ideally all the articles 
could be hosted by jay so that we don't need to worry about dead links, 
but if there are copyright issues, perhaps point to the document if it 
exists online and hold on to a copy in case the link ever goes dead; 
when that day comes, then spend the time to get approval to post the 
stashed copy

(2) if any of the topics above doesn't have a good existing document, 
then think about writing one.  a good summary for each is also very useful.

(3) one thread that keeps coming up over and over on the list is which 
HP mass storage devices work in which computers.  collecting that list 
would be great.  I have stored a number of these emails from the list if 
you want me to send you what I've kept on the subject.

(4) I recently wanted to capture the contents of a ROM that was soldered 
into a board.  I didn't want to unsolder it, so I used by HP 1631D logic 
analyzer to monitor all the pins while the computer was driving it with 
a test program that made sure every address was getting hit.  I used my 
hp87 to drive the logic analyzer via HPIB and repeatedly sampled the 
pins, analyzed what was captured and repeated until I had seen all 
addresses.  Finally I dumped the final ROM image to my PC via the serial 
adapter.  It took me about four hours to figure out how to program 
everything, having never done it before.  it would have been very useful 
for me to have seen other such code before I tried mine.  I'd be happy 
to give you my program in case somebody else finds such a thing useful. 
  It seems like there is very little in the way of HP-8x's BASIC 
examples on the web that I could find, much less examples showing how to 
drive test equipment.