PC-IB card hp-150

[hgnhnnyt]

Is there a way to emulate or diy one the card because dang is it rare trying to find old business stuff. Also if their isn't already a diy online or emulation of the card would it be possible to hand make one and yes I know it would be very hard but my whole computer hobby I've learned myself so just another thing.

[rprosperi]

Was this an HP-150 specific board, or can the HP-150 use the normal ISA card HP sold for IBM compatible PC's?

If the former, I can't help, but if the latter, please contact me off list.

[Martin Hepperle]

It is not clear to me what you are actually looking for.

The HP-150 and HP-150 II have HP-IB built-in and you can use this interface for disk drives as well as for controlling external devices connected to the HP-IB bus.
There are some limitations (no SRQ reply capability), though. The Technical Manual describes how to access this interface.

If you want something for a IBM-PC, you will find HP-IB-cards regularly on Ebay. Here yo9u must be sure that you also find the software supporting the card, depending on your operating system.

Martin

[hgnhnnyt]

(05-07-2024 11:56 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  Was this an HP-150 specific board, or can the HP-150 use the normal ISA card HP sold for IBM compatible PC's?

If the former, I can't help, but if the latter, please contact me off list.

I think it is a hp-150 specific board in this link https://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=972 it talks about how you need a pc-ib card to use pc instruments tools. Unless you can just use a hp-ib port.

[hgnhnnyt]

(05-07-2024 02:23 PM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  It is not clear to me what you are actually looking for.

The HP-150 and HP-150 II have HP-IB built-in and you can use this interface for disk drives as well as for controlling external devices connected to the HP-IB bus.
There are some limitations (no SRQ reply capability), though. The Technical Manual describes how to access this interface.

If you want something for a IBM-PC, you will find HP-IB-cards regularly on Ebay. Here yo9u must be sure that you also find the software supporting the card, depending on your operating system.

Martin

I'm looking for a card that is a pc-ib shown in this link https://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=972 it talks about how you need a pc-ib card to use pc instruments tools. Unless its just so you can use multiple at once and you can just use hp-ib port

[brouhaha]

(05-07-2024 11:56 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  Was this an HP-150 specific board, or can the HP-150 use the normal ISA card HP sold for IBM compatible PC's?

The HP 150 does not accept ISA cards. It was from the era when top-tier vendors still thought they could sell PCs that were "better" than IBM's, and not fully compatible. (Even IBM made that mistake with the proprietary Mictochannel bus in most PS/2 models.)

There isn't such a thing as a "normal" PC-IB card. PC-IB is not the same as HP-IB/GP-IB/IEEE-488. PC-IB was only used for the short-lived 6101n series instruments. Both the instruments and the adapter cards are rare as hen's teeth.

[hgnhnnyt]

(05-07-2024 08:35 PM)brouhaha Wrote:  

(05-07-2024 11:56 AM)rprosperi Wrote:  Was this an HP-150 specific board, or can the HP-150 use the normal ISA card HP sold for IBM compatible PC's?

The HP 150 does not accept ISA cards. It was from the era when top-tier vendors still thought they could sell PCs that were "better" than IBM's, and not fully compatible. (Even IBM made that mistake with the proprietary Mictochannel bus in most PS/2 models.)

There isn't such a thing as a "normal" PC-IB card. PC-IB is not the same as HP-IB/GP-IB/IEEE-488. PC-IB was only used for the short-lived 6101n series instruments. Both the instruments and the adapter cards are rare as hen's teeth.

Ah I found a digitizing oscilloscope with ribbon cables and the PSU for like 5 bucks at a flea market so not much of a loss. If I ever figure out how to reverse engineer which I want to learn. I'll have to see if it is possible to create the PC-IB card with just the tool and software.

[brouhaha]

One of the "features" of PC-IB is that the actual values/commands/responses read and written to the registers in the device are not documented anywhere. The only supported interfaces to control PC-IB are their GUI software, and a GW-BASIC library. Want to use C, C++, Pascal, Fortran, assembly language, etc.? You're probably S.O.L.

This is unlike e.g. HP-IB and HP-IL, where the manuals for almost every device documented the commands and responses actually sent over the bus, even if the user ultimately uses some library API rather than crafting the commands and parsing the responses.

They justified this by claiming that it saved having to put more processing power and memory into the devices, as would be needed for a user-facing command set (e.g., the later SCPI language). However, this excuse falls falt because these instruments were designed after the time that microprocessors and memory necessary to parse a command lanugage had gotten cheap. Being generous, that might have saved them almost a dollar in manufacturing cost for an instrument sold for $650.

A general overview of the bus protocol was in the May 1986 issue of HP Journal. The interface carries both a parallel 8-bit bus for devices needing higher speed, and a serial bus for lower speed devices. Each instrument used one or the other, but the host software hid that detail from the user. They made a custom NMOS bus controller chip for the host interface cards (HP-150 and IBM PC bus). The low-speed devices big-banged the serial interface (which was weird, not just normal async serial). The instruments using the parallel interface used custom silicon, which might or might not have been the same chip used on the host adapter.

There might have been depot service manuals, but unlike almsot all other HP T&M equipment of that era, there were no service manuals available to the customer.

[Martin Hepperle]

(05-07-2024 07:20 PM)hgnhnnyt Wrote:  [...]
I'm looking for a card that is a pc-ib shown in this link https://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=972 it talks about how you need a pc-ib card to use pc instruments tools. Unless its just so you can use multiple at once and you can just use hp-ib port

Ah, o.k., now I understand...
I totally forgot that these Instruments existed. I only remembered having seen them advertised for the Vectra. I see this interface and the connected instrument system family more as a try to lock the buyer into the HP world, probably with simplification and cost reduction.
I guess in the long term most users preferred standard HP-IB bus interfaces because besides HP many other manufacturers offered devices with this interface.

Martin