Characteristics of HP-IL Transformers?

[hth]

Somewhat unrelated, but I had a project idea of making an HP-IL box based on the BeagleBone black. It is a low cost Linux computer with an interesting I/O RISC co-processor. My idea was to use the co-processor to handle the low level stuff and then do the emulation of HP-IL devices at the Linux side.

That computer fits into one of those metal mint candy boxes and would be able to be standalone (no need to connect to a laptop of stationary computer). Then you could always ssh into it to configure things or even provide IL devices for getting on the internet, perhaps treat the Linux machine as a kind of co-processor to the the HP-41. My thinking is that it would be a lot faster as it would bypass the USB channel, allowing the ARM processor to directly access the HP-IL frames in memory.

Lots of ideas, too little time, LOL