Infotek Compiler for HP 9000 Series 200/300

[Michael Fehlhammer]

Meanwhile I got the Infothek compiler to work.
I had the manual and didn't know that, crazy, sorry.

Indeed a dongle is needed even if you have an Infotek floating point card installed.
The good news is that the dongle ( for the HP-IB port ) is not linked to the software serial number, so any Infotek dongle will work along with any copy of the compiler. ( This was also confirmed in a contemporary aticle in a computer magazine, I read that somewhere, don't remember exactly where).
I have got two of these dongles and can borrow one to an electronics expert for reverse engineering. I guess this task is not to difficult, I assume the dongle is a rather simple device.
If the dongle could easily be reproduced, I can scan the manual and give the pdf to the museum.
The compiler is a perfect match for BASIC 5.1.
I made some benchmark testing with different FPU cards.
You can see from the following table how advanced Infotek's copro cards were, compared to HP standards. Infotek was famous for there fast and relatively inexpensive hardware extensions, like memory boards, or AD converter cards. And the big plus of the Infotek compiler is that it supports all FPU boards ever built for the HP 200 series ( also the 310 and 320 ):

Computer used for the tests: HP 9826A ( M 68000 @ 8 MHz ), Operating system: BASIC 5.1

Floating Point Unit