HP-71B & PILBox & Remote Terminal

[Nick Taylor]

I have recently built JF’s excellent PILBox, and managed to connect my HP-71B to my Mac using it.

I’ve started looking into the HP-IL commands, but was wondering if the following is even possible:

I would like to use a terminal emulator (called Serial) on my Mac to both send keystrokes and receive screen output to/from the HP-71B.

I’ve tried connecting the Serial App to the USB device provided by the PILBox, and although some strange letters appear on the Serial window, the HP-71B soon complains that the “Loop is broken”.

Using the PRINTER IS command on the HP-71B, I was able to mirror the output of the 71B on the ILPER application (running in VMWare), but I’m really after two-way communication to a standard terminal.

Any pointers, settings, commands or dissuasion gratefully received!