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**rprosperi** · 02-25-2018, 11:53 PM

I've been wanting to check out the HP-7470A Plotter simulator in the pyILPer PIL-Box client, but never having had one, I don't have any programs to throw at it. I took a peek at the "Interfacing and Programming Manual" (available at the HP Computer Museum) and see that getting into the graphics language is no small undertaking. It does contain trivial demo programs for the '41, '75 and Series-80, but these are so simple as to be useless to exercise the simulator. So...

Does anyone have an HP-75 or HP-71 program that draws something simple (circle, spiral, some other shape) on a 7470 plotter they can share here? Most convenient format would be in a .lif file, but any format is fine; even a text listing here is OK, I can move it over or worst case key it in.

Thanks in advance.

Sylvain Cote · 02-26-2018, 01:29 AM

Robert,
I have made available a year ago, the HP-75 Graphics Solutions Books programs (hp75@group.io).
This solution books specifically target the HP-7470A and allow to create Line chart, Bar chart or Pie chart with your HP-75C/D.
At the time I did not have the book itself, but that hole in my collection have been corrected since Wink

I will try to scan the manual this week and make it available at the same place as the programs.
Best regards,
Sylvain

**rprosperi** · 02-26-2018, 06:52 PM

(02-26-2018 01:29 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote: Robert,
I have made available a year ago, the HP-75 Graphics Solutions Books programs (hp75@group.io).
This solution books specifically target the HP-7470A and allow to create Line chart, Bar chart or Pie chart with your HP-75C/D.
At the time I did not have the book itself, but that hole in my collection have been corrected since
I will try to scan the manual this week and make it available at the same place as the programs.
Best regards,
Sylvain

Thanks for the reminder Sylvain. Ironically, I believe I sent you that book, due to my 'lack of interest in graphics'... LOL.

I have confirmed I have the s/w. No need to scan the book just for this, but if you could take a look and let me know which of the programs (BEDIT, BPLOT, LEDIT, LPLOT, PEDIT, PPLOT) use the 7470 it would help.

Re-reading your comment, I guess it's clear that these are 3 pairs of programs for editing/plotting Bar, Line and Pie charts.

I'll load them onto a '75 and take a look. Thanks for the nice hint.

Sylvain Cote · 02-27-2018, 12:34 AM

(02-26-2018 06:52 PM)rprosperi Wrote: Thanks for the reminder Sylvain. Ironically, I believe I sent you that book, due to my 'lack of interest in graphics'... LOL.

I just checked and this one came from Adam Jones. To get you started, I did a partial scan, check your email.

**rprosperi** · 02-27-2018, 12:53 AM

(02-27-2018 12:34 AM)Sylvain Cote Wrote:
(02-26-2018 06:52 PM)rprosperi Wrote: Thanks for the reminder Sylvain. Ironically, I believe I sent you that book, due to my 'lack of interest in graphics'... LOL.
I just checked and this one came from Adam Jones. To get you started, I did a partial scan, check your email.

Thanks, got it. And btw, excellent choice, as this is the same set of programs I installed earlier today.

Thanks!

Dave Frederickson · 02-27-2018, 03:45 AM

There's an example HP-GL program in this doc.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?catfile=780

**rprosperi** · 02-27-2018, 02:20 PM

(02-27-2018 03:45 AM)Dave Frederickson Wrote: There's an example HP-GL program in this doc.

http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?catfile=780

Thanks. I've never used a 9835 or 9845 so no familiarity with their BASIC, but the booklet itself looks like a nice tutorial for simple graphics in general and HP-GL specifically. Thx for sharing the link.

Dave Frederickson · 02-27-2018, 05:56 PM

The takeaway from this document is an example of HP-GL commands. For the adventurous, a plotter diagnostic exists for the Portable PLUS.

Manual:
http://www.hpmuseum.net/document.php?catfile=828

Software:
http://www.hpmuseum.net/software/PLOTSUPP.TD0

I haven't converted the TD0, yet. If the programs are in BASIC (unlikely) then converting them to 71B BASIC would be a good exercise for learning HP-GL.

Dave

Sylvain Cote · 02-27-2018, 08:02 PM

HP-GL is designed to be very easy to use, it like a "Etch A Sketch" with a motor. Wink

The HP-7470A Graphics Plotter: Interfacing and Programming Manual is my go to book when I do HP-GL.

jsi · (This post was last modified: 02-28-2018 11:10 AM by jsi.)

I have attached a LIF image file with HP-71 test programs and HP-GL test files that I use for regression testing of the pyILPER plotter emulator.

To run the test suite:

copy the basic file "TESTALL" and the text file "TESTFL" to the HP-71
enable the plotter and assign an HP-IL address to it
execute : RUN TESTALL
enter the device name of the tape drive (e.g.TAPE(1))

There are user interactions necessary:

The program GRA suspends execution to change the pen sizes of the plotter, enter "cont" to continue
the digitizer test requires to click into the plotter window and to push the "Enter" button

You may run the basic programs on the LIF image directly or use the "plot" program to dump HP-GL text files to the plotter.

The test suite covers all examples from the "Interfacing and Programming Manual of the HP7470". Some of the larger HP-GL files were created with the HP-41 plotter rom and the examples in the book "Grafik mit dem HP-41" (unfortunately only available in German).

The plotter emulator allows for logging the incoming HP-GL commands.

I recommend to use the "output" statement to transmit HP-GL to the plotter instead of the "print" command since the necessary "printer is" assignment to the plotter tends to mess things up.

Regards
Joachim

Klaus Overhage · 12-18-2019, 08:27 AM

Hello Joachim,

thank you very much for the examples in plot3.zip. I was able to send the text files to the pyILPER plotter emulator using the plot program and save them as PDF. The PDF's look really great and give the feeling of using a brand new real plotter.

Most BASIC programs ran on my real HP-71B without any problems. But all BASIC programs with an ENTER command got stuck at this point. Also clicking in the plotter window and pressing the "Enter" button did not help. I also tried to enter coordinates with the "P1 / P2" button. Nothing helped, the programs never got over the first ENTER command. It's about HATCH, FILL, MASK, DIGI, LOST1, LOST2, SYNTAX and CLIP. I use Windows 10 Pro 64bit and pyIlPER 1.8.1.

Can you please explain which settings and manual activities are exactly necessary for the ENTER command to work.

Regards
Klaus

jsi · 12-19-2019, 05:42 PM

Hello Klaus,
I could reproduce this behaviour by setting the HP-71 end of line sequence to a non standard value.
Please call the ENDLINE command without any parameter to restore the default CR/LF end of line sequence and run the programs again.

Regards
Joachim

Klaus Overhage · (This post was last modified: 12-23-2019 10:02 AM by Klaus Overhage.)

Hello Joachim,

you are totally right: After I enter the command "ENDLINE" in my HP-71B to set the End-of-Line Sequence to it's default value all the basic programs work. I can run TESTALL and watch the examples with user interactions only in GRA and DIGI as you descripe above.

I have bought the HP 7074A "Interfacing and Programming Manual" in real and just for fun I will try to transfer some old SIMONS-Basic C64 Graphic-Demos to High-Res Plotter-Graphic.

Thank you very much
Klaus