pyILPER 1.4.0 released

[Christoph Giesselink]

(01-24-2017 05:06 AM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  Okay, when I run MSDOSXFR with pyILPER in the loop with a 9114, "Device Not SS80" is reported. If I substitute ILPer 2.22 for pyILPER, then the transfer completes with "Done".

To make it clear, the drive simulations in ILPer and pyILPER aren't supporting the SS80 protocol. The SS80 communicates with the SAD command with the drive specific extentions, whereas the Filbert protocol, supported by ILPer and pyILPER, use the DDL and DDT commands.

The SAD command is normally used in connection with the "Auto-extended address mode" (AEP, AES). The real HP9114 don't support this mode, so SAD is completely reserved for the SS80 protocol.

But we have different behaviours with the drive simulations. The drive in pyILPER is generally supporting the "Auto-extended address mode", so SAD maybe interpreted as Secondary Address. In ILPer this dependes on the "AutoExtAddr" setting. If it's set (AutoExtAddr=1), the drive supports the "Auto-extended address mode" like in pyILPER. If it's cleared (AutoExtAddr=0), it's the default setting, the "Auto-extended address mode" is disabled.

Some years ago, I searched for SS80 documentation and reference implementations. The main reason, why I never begin with such an implementation is the fact, that I don't have a machine using the SS80 protocol. Even, if I would have the possibilty to get such a machine for free, I'm not interested in. For many these machines are collectable items, perhaps they remember them on their early days in company. I'm too young for this, my HP career began with a HP15C followed soon by a HP28S.

So some of you may wonder how I get in contact with HP-IL? My origins in the community are base on my work on Emu48 and later on Emu42. So over the years I collected Pioneers and Clamshell calculators to get the ROM images. And of course I bought a HP71, because it was the first calculator with the Saturn CPU. Also I was able to get a cheap HP 82401A HP-IL module, so I had the calculator and the IL module, but no peripheral. In 2009 I decided to buy a PIL-Box, for playing with my HP71 and HP41 HP-IL interface.