80 Series Newbie

[Dave Frederickson]

I've just acquired an 85B. What are the essential accessories for this machine? I plan on using the HPDrive disc emulator so GPIB board recommendations would be appreciated.

Dave

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

For HPIB do you mean for the 85B or the storage server end?. For the 85B there is only the 82937A, I have an extra if you have trouble finding one. For your PC that plan to run HPDrive on, if it has ISA bus slots, the ISA bus adapters are usually less expensive and any card based on the NEC D7210 or derivatives should work. HP cards do not work as the are based on the TI 9914 and are unable to support the Amigo Identify protocol, which violates the GPIB standard. Pretty much any of the National Instruments ISA or PCI adapters will work, details are on the HPdrive web page.

The 85B has the base Mass Storage ROM built in, this will give you access to Amigo devices like your 9121. To access SS/80 devices you need the extended mass storage ROM. The ROMs for 83/85 are different from the ROMs for the 86/87 due to the extended memory implementation on the 86/87. Original ROMs are not always easy to obtain however images of the ROMs are readily available, which lead me to design and build an EPROM card, which never has gone beyond the prototype stage maybe I should look into laying out a PCB and having some cards made.

[Dave Frederickson]

(07-20-2015 03:56 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  For HPIB do you mean for the 85B or the storage server end?

Hi Paul,

The 85B included an 82937A and I picked up a 82938A HP-IL Interface cheap from 360Tech. The plan is to connect the 82937A to an ISA GPIB card in the same vintage PC I have my HP-IL card and use HPDrive. From what I've read, the 82938A will NOT support the 9114, even with the EMS ROM, correct?

Dave

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

That is correct the Series 80 depends on using the Amigo Identification protocol to figure out what the addressed device is and there is no way to do that over HP-IL. It is however possible to write your own routine to access it over HPIL. There is little or no built in support for HPIL, other than basic communication that is handled by the 8048 in the HPIL adapter.

Note: the comment about Amigo Id is only for storage for everything else it throws out the data and hopes for the best.

[Martin Hepperle]

(07-20-2015 03:56 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  [...]
Original ROMs are not always easy to obtain however images of the ROMs are readily available, which lead me to design and build an EPROM card, which never has gone beyond the prototype stage maybe I should look into laying out a PCB and having some cards made.

Paul,

are you aware of the PRM-85 project? If there are enough interested parties it might be possible to produce another batch of this board (I would like to have one).

Martin

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

(07-21-2015 08:25 AM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  

(07-20-2015 03:56 PM)Paul Berger (Canada) Wrote:  [...]
Original ROMs are not always easy to obtain however images of the ROMs are readily available, which lead me to design and build an EPROM card, which never has gone beyond the prototype stage maybe I should look into laying out a PCB and having some cards made.

Paul,

are you aware of the PRM-85 project? If there are enough interested parties it might be possible to produce another batch of this board (I would like to have one).

Martin

Martin,

Yes I am aware of it, but when I got my 85A there was none available and there was no indication that there would ever be more so I struck out on my own and created my own design, but I have never produced a PCB for it, it only exists as a hand wired prototype. If there was enough interest perhaps I could lay out a PCB and have one produced. I have a good stock of the CPLD that I used on it and could provide levels of kits from board with programmed CPLD up to fully assembled.

Paul.

[Sylvain Cote]

(07-21-2015 08:25 AM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  are you aware of the PRM-85 project?
If there are enough interested parties it might be possible to produce another batch of this board (I would like to have one).

Martin,

Paul has his own board design for hosting ROM images and yes he is aware of the PRM-85 project.

To my knowledge, the last batch of the PRM-85 produced was in December 2014.
You have to send en mail to John Shadbolt (UK), he's handling the board requests and Bill Kotaska (USA) is making the boards.
Three ROM options are available: HP-85 SuperROM, HP-85 SuperROM with EMS support and HP-87 SuperROM.

Best regards,

Sylvain

Edit: Paul was faster than me 8-)

[cruff]

(07-21-2015 08:25 AM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  are you aware of the PRM-85 project?

I acquired a PRM-85 a while back, it works great. I reprogrammed the EPROM on mine from the original 85A version to work with the 85B I later acquired. If anyone is going to make a similar board, you might consider placing a switch that would be easily accessible when the board is mounted in a module case, such that the service ROM could be quickly enabled and disabled without having to open the case.

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

(07-21-2015 12:36 PM)cruff Wrote:  

(07-21-2015 08:25 AM)Martin Hepperle Wrote:  are you aware of the PRM-85 project?

I acquired a PRM-85 a while back, it works great. I reprogrammed the EPROM on mine from the original 85A version to work with the 85B I later acquired. If anyone is going to make a similar board, you might consider placing a switch that would be easily accessible when the board is mounted in a module case, such that the service ROM could be quickly enabled and disabled without having to open the case.

I used a different approach I use six 8K EPROMs instead of one big ROM, four of which are selectable from any one of the 15 common ROM images for 86/87 (the ROMs for 83/85 are a subset) and the remaining two ROMs are fully configurable for any one of the 255 select codes available in case one wanted to create their own ROM. I use a different approach for the Diagnostic ROM too, I have an original diagnostic ROM that is the only occupant of a 82936A and on the odd occasion that I want to run diagnostics I just plug in the card.

I also designed one for 85A that has the 85B mass storage, Edisk, and Extended mass storage along with the I/O ROM in a 32K EPROM and then four more fully selectable 8K EPROMs.

[Dave Frederickson]

Thanks for all the info, guys. I'm looking into a PRM-85.

In case I need parts or service, what's the best way to contact Larry Atherton?

Dave

[Dave Frederickson]

HP-85B Update:

The tape drive is back after being refurbished by Larry Atherton at LA Tech Renewal. Got some orange printer belts, too. The unit had been dropped and I've straightened the back panel and repaired the minor case damage. Keyboard has been disassembled, cleaned, and DeOxified. GPIB card installed in vintage PC ready for HPDrive. Also joined the HP Series 80 group on Yahoo.

Two questions:
1. Can I burn the Service ROM to a 2764 and plug it into the empty socket on the Logic Board? Just a rhetorical question 'cause I'll try it anyway after verifying the pinouts.
2. Does anyone have the I/O Exerciser Tape files with EDTEST to test the upper 32K of RAM?

Dave

[Paul Berger (Canada)]

(08-14-2015 01:49 AM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  HP-85B Update:

The tape drive is back after being refurbished by Larry Atherton at LA Tech Renewal. Got some orange printer belts, too. The unit had been dropped and I've straightened the back panel and repaired the minor case damage. Keyboard has been disassembled, cleaned, and DeOxified. GPIB card installed in vintage PC ready for HPDrive. Also joined the HP Series 80 group on Yahoo.

Two questions:
1. Can I burn the Service ROM to a 2764 and plug it into the empty socket on the Logic Board? Just a rhetorical question 'cause I'll try it anyway after verifying the pinouts.
2. Does anyone have the I/O Exerciser Tape files with EDTEST to test the upper 32K of RAM?

Dave

1. No the ROMs used in the 85 use multiple supply voltages and are designed to work directly off of the Capricorn bus, which has 8 lines carrying both address and data, addresses are clocked out as two sequential bytes that devices on the bus are obliged to latch and for memory devices they must also be prepared to increment that address without a new address being clocked out when reading sequential bytes, up to 8 bytes may be moved in this manner, which conveniently happens to be exactly the size of a full precision floating point number.

Sorry can't help with 2 diag ROM is the best way to go for testing memory, that is one of the things that spurred me on to creating my own ROM card.