Adventures in Paper Tape with a 9830A

[mrcity]

Update! A few weeks ago, I received the Facit 4042 machine. The seller did an excellent job with packing and speedy shipping. It punches 8 holes out of the paper in the expected manner, so all is well there. In terms of reading, it's probably waiting for some kind of control signal before it attempts to read. I can move the tape back and forth one character using the control panel buttons, but there's gotta be a bent mechanism somewhere because it doesn't hold down the tape very well, and sometimes it gets crunched between the reader and the sprocket rather than going through nicely.

I also received an 11144 (ASCII Bus Interface), which should provide me the interface I need (despite not being the 59405A HP-IB Calculator Interface, the manual says they're pretty much identical). I don't have any of the cassettes or etc. required to validate it by the procedures set forth in the manual, but can't imagine that's too important given my setup and modern equipment.

This leaves me still waiting on the 11272B ROM (which should be nearby) and...the new rolls of paper tape, where sadly the vendor hasn't updated me on the order status at all. At least the Facit has a good amount of blank tape in it.

I also picked up the test/GPIB breakout board mentioned on page 4-1 of the HP 59405 manual, and may end up wiring something to it in order to drive the bus and communicate with the paper tape punch while I wait on the 11272B to come in, or in the event I can't figure out how to program the 9830 to drive. (There are eight completely unknown DIP sockets on the Facit 4042 that I'm hoping are identical to other models, since there's no online documentation on this one.)

Since the 59405-66503 (i.e. the aforementioned breakout board) has a 5V plug on it, hopefully it's all 5V and something fairly easy to drive with modern microcontrollers. This way, with an understanding of the HPIB protocol, I can make a pint-sized toy drive the paper tape machine before getting the 9830 to do it, which is the ultimate goal!