HP 82161A - SD card drive?

[anetzer]

Hi!

I know this is a crazy one and all decent folk aught to point to the PIL-Box solution.

But just for curiosity's sake:Could one swap an Arduino or the likes and an SD card reader into the HP 82161A? The enclosure seems to have some room and there might be space for the reader in the spare cassette compartment. It might even be switchable to and fro...

Rainy saturday ideas, I know.

a.n.

[cruff]

(08-30-2014 08:47 AM)anetzer Wrote:  But just for curiosity's sake:Could one swap an Arduino or the likes and an SD card reader into the HP 82161A?

I"ve thought of doing something like this with a flood damaged 82162A printer I acquired cheaply. There would be plenty of room and the printer case has a nice access door already built in.

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

Sure you can use the 1LB3 chip inside to interface to the HPIL loop they are well documented, and pretty easy to understand, HP even publish a guide to writing code to manage the HPIL interface.

I have started down the path of writing code to manage a HPIL connection through a 1LB3 but I am using an ancient microprocessor because I have them and they interest me, I am sure the coding would be simpler with something like an Arduino but I have never used one so I don't know for sure.

Because the interface between the 1LB3 and its host is a 8 bit parallel interface, switching between the existing tape control hardware, which is based on a mask programmed microcontroller, and your new microcontroller with code to drive the SD card would be at best difficult. It is possible to have multiple units inside a single HPIL device however this is normally done by having one controller run everything. I suppose if you really wanted to preserve the tape function you could have your new controller emulate the 1LB3 when talking to the tape drives embedded controller. This would of course entail some cutting and hacking inside the tape drive.

[hp41cx]

HP41 & SDCard

[MeindertKuipers]

Having the HP41 access a FAT file system was a great challenge, and I did get everything working. It should actually be possible with a Clonix type of module (with a microSD card), and I know Diego once considered this. To do this thorugh HP-IL would be an effort of the same magnitude. As long as you can get a modern small processor (PIC, ARM, Arduino) that support a file system to talk with HP-IL you're in business.
I think the best approach is to take the PIL-Box hardware to connect to HP-IL.

I am actually playing with this idea, and plan to discuss it on the upcoming European Summit in Allschwill,

Regards,

Meindert