HP 110 (not Portable Plus) Technical Manual

[Martin Hepperle]

In this old, archived thread I found a reference to a Programmers Reference Manual for the HP 110.
https://www.hpmuseum.org/cgi-sys/cgiwrap...read=51431

The document number and title is given as
45419-90003 HP110/System Programmer's Guide Reference Manual

While I know that the corresponding Technical Reference Manual for the Portable Plus is available, I cannot find the one for the HP 110.

Does someone have a copy of this manual or a scan of it?

I have used the Portable Plus Manual for writing some Pascal software accessing hardware directly, and I would like to adapt the code for the HP 110 without too much trial and error. Both systems are very similar but also rather different in some aspects.

Martin

[J-F Garnier]

I have these 2 manuals in pdf:
- Series 100 Programmer's Reference Manual, PN 45419-90003, May 1984, 229 pages,
- HP 110 System Reference Manual, PN 45419-90004, May 1984, 48 pages.

The pdf files are dated April 2006, and the pdf properties give Daniel Sancho as the author (creator of the pdf actually).

I don't remember if I was in touch with Daniel directly, or if he posted these files somewhere, or if I got the files indirectly via Emmanuel Compes (since he is mentioned in the thread you referenced).
Anyway, I will PM you.

Edit: The Programmer's Reference Manual is also available on the HP Computer Museum here.

J-F

[Martin Hepperle]

Jeff,

thank you very much for the document numbers.

The Programmers Reference Manual 45419-90003 is the usual MS-DOS Reference Manual from Microsoft, but the 45419-90004 is HP 110 specific.
Unfortunately much thinner than the one for the Portable Plus. But I guess that e.g. the HP-IL Interrupts are the same for both systems (110 and Portable plus).

I think it would make sense to place a copy of the missing manual on the HP-Museum archive site and maybe also on bitsavers to avoid that it gets lost.
Will see what is possible and report back.

Martin

[Martin Hepperle]

So I was spending a week researching and probing and finally finding out how the Alpha screen RAM with the weird arrangement of character cells and attribute half-nibbles on the HP 110 is organized.

Yesterday, I revisited the early issues of "The Portable Paper" and quickly found a description of the RAM layout together with some Pascal routines for directly accessing the screen (in this case, The Portable Paper V1 N3 , 1986).

At least the findings are the same...

So: if someone else wants to know more about the Portable (or the Portable Plus) it is always worth to read through the issues of The Portable Paper. Later issues more and more focused on the Portable Plus, of course.

Martin

[Martin Hepperle]

In the meantime I tested some Turbo Pascal Functions, which I had written for the Portable Plus, on the Portable.
I use Turbo Pascal 3.0, because it is so small that it runs nicely on the Portable leaving enough space on its 150 KB RAM disk.
For exchanging files with my laptop I used the built-in TERMINAL program and the XMODEM function of Teraterm. Due to the 128 Byte Packets this is slow, but more practical than juggling disks.

To summarize:

• Of course, running the MS-DOS system, the Portable and the Portable Plus both support standard DOS calls for text i/o.
• Both systems support a standard set of escape sequences for output in Alpha mode, including positioning and character attributes.
• The Portable has 3 character attributes (normal, inverse, blinking) while the Portable Plus adds underline.
• Only the Portable Plus offers escape sequences for graphics output. Not fast, but easy to use with any programming language.
• HP's BIOS support for the HP-IL functions is present in both, the Portable and the Portable Plus. A program using HP-IL works on both of them.
• The BIOS support for directly accessing the the Alpha and Graphics screen is only present in the Portable Plus (FastAlpha and FastGraphics). In the Portable you have to write your own code, directly accessing the display RAM in Alpha and Graphics mode.
  

I will add some documentation and then make my Pascal routines available. They comprise a complete set of HP-IL as well as simple graphics (line drawing) procedures.

Martin