Printing from HP-86B ?

[rprosperi]

(07-12-2017 02:15 PM)J-F Garnier Wrote:  No ! Use PC pure (native) text files. No need to convert to LIF type. Just use Notepad or similar to create it.

This is the purpose of the DOSLINK method: import and export text files from/to the host PC by reading (ENTER) or writing (PRINT, OUTPUT) CR-LF terminated ASCII strings.

Thanks for the explanation. I believe I've a 71B-centric view of the HP universe...

After some small changes (e.g. to handle empty lines, etc.) this program works, to copy a text file from IL-Per's DOSLINK interface:

Code:

10 ! Test program to copy a text file from HPIL DOSLINK device to a disk file
18 ! ON ERROR GOTO 100
20 I=1 @ DIM A$[120]
30 CREATE "OUTPUT:D700",80,120
40 ASSIGN# 1 TO  "OUTPUT:D700"
50 ENTER 904 ; A$
55 DISP "Record";I @ I=I+1
60 IF LEN (A$)<4 THEN 80
70 IF A$[1,4]="*EOF" THEN GOTO 100
80 PRINT# 1 ; A$
90 GOTO 50
100 ASSIGN# 1 TO  *
101 ! IF ERRN #0 THEN DISP "Error";ERRN ;"at line";ERRL 
110 END

As listed, the program handles text files with these parameters:

• 80 lines or less
• Max length 118 chars (+CR/LF =120)
• Last line must begin with *EOF
  

So this technique can be reliably used to copy a text file to S80 from a PIL-Box using IL-Per via HP-IL interface. However for this technique to be useful as a means to copy a BASIC program to S80, the data file would have to be written in the very specific format Paul documented above, in order to be translated by the GET command. Individual line conversion is straightforward, however the lines are packed into 256-byte records (for efficient file I/O) making the conversion a bit more tedious.

Thanks to all that have contributed to this little 'I wonder if...' exercise.