Using the PIL-Box with the Portable Plus

[J-F Garnier]

(06-05-2014 11:20 PM)Michael Fehlhammer Wrote:  Really good news, but I am confused; how can that work?
Jean-Francois, can you please explain the communication in more detail?

Background of my confusion:
ILPer implements the Filbert-protocol which is used by HP 41C, 71b and 75C to address the cassette drive and the 9114 floppy drive. Whereas the PP uses the SS80 protocol to access the floppy drive ( 9114 understands both protocols ). So ILPer should not work with the PP, or is there a SS80 - version of ILPer?

That's REALLY the good guestion!

This is what I thought until recently. I discovered that the PP supports also the Filbert protocol (in the strict Filbert aka HP82161 way - that is capacity is limited to 128KB), by reading the newly released Portable Paper Newsletters that Dan helped to make public.

Anyway, I plan to add full Subset/80 to ILPer, to support larger discs like hard drives up to 10MB (this is another limitation of the PP).

Actually, I should say that I re-discovered this feature, since I should have know it; in 1985 I attended a Portable Plus Training in HP Grenoble (France), and one of the slides (that I still own) explicitly describes it:



OT: Oh these nice pre-PowerPoint slides...

J-F