Update to ILPer v2.1

[Christoph Giesselink]

Just a short update of ILPer v2 disabling the ESC key and added Jurgens suggestion of increasing the printer width over the scope window area when the scope is disabled.

The result was a printer window with ~74 columns. To avoid any questions "why not 80 columns" I increased the width of the ILPer main window to get an extended printer window with ~80 columns. The real number of column depend on font size, used OS, display driver and other factors. So the resulting no. of columns on your PC may less or more than the nominal 80 columns.

The modified program version and the IPv6 version are available at http://hp.giesselink.com/. I also updated the Virtual HP-IL example at http://hp.giesselink.com/HPIL/ILPer/ILPer.htm with new pictures.

[rprosperi]

(12-08-2015 08:08 PM)Christoph Giesselink Wrote:  Just a short update of ILPer v2 disabling the ESC key and added Jurgens suggestion of increasing the printer width over the scope window area when the scope is disabled.

The result was a printer window with ~74 columns. To avoid any questions "why not 80 columns" I increased the width of the ILPer main window to get an extended printer window with ~80 columns. The real number of column depend on font size, used OS, display driver and other factors. So the resulting no. of columns on your PC may less or more than the nominal 80 columns.

The modified program version and the IPv6 version are available at http://hp.giesselink.com/. I also updated the Virtual HP-IL example at http://hp.giesselink.com/HPIL/ILPer/ILPer.htm with new pictures.

Yet another early Christmas present. Oh boy!!

Runs perfectly and I've already proved the ESC issue (closing ILPer when I think I am hitting [ON] on Emu71) is gone forever.

Thanks Christoph, and also to Tobie and Jurgen for posting comments to improve this great tool.

[charger73]

Thank you Christoph! Good work.

(Perhaps you can add, later the [ESC] disable feature to the ILVideo80 v1.2... :-)

Best regards
Tobie

[gferluga]

Deployed today on my MacBook Air, El Capitan 10.11.2, via PlayOnMac and works like a charm.
Thank you!

[Jurgen Keller]

I encountered a strange problem with ILPer tonight. I wanted to save a page of my RAMBOX on HDRIVE1. Here is what I did:
XEQ "DIR" (just to see that access to HDRIVE1 works)
XEQ "NEWM" 030 (initialize HDRIVE1)
10 "TEST" XEQ "WRTPG" (the RAMBOX way to save page #10 to file "TEST" on a mass storage device)

That worked perfectly fine on my MacBook where I have ILPer 1.52 installed.
However, when I try the same procedure on my Windows laptops (one with Win7, the other with Win10), the WRTPG call always fails with "NO MEDM". On both Windows computers I've installed the lastet ILPer software and the latest FTDI drivers.

I've tried to play with the FTDI driver settings, however, no luck. The problem persists. I even opened my PILBox and reconfigured it to 9600 baud, but it didn't change anything.

In the end I've installed ILPer 1.43 (just a version that I've found on one of the Windows computers), and it works perfectly! Hmm, something seems to be wrong with the newer ILPer versions. Has anybody out there observed similar problems? Any idea what changed in ILPer that might cause such issues?

As Christoph has implemented some nice features in newer versions I'm not happy that I'm stuck at an older release so any hints are highly appreciated.

[Dave Frederickson]

(01-26-2016 10:30 PM)Jurgen Keller Wrote:  Any idea what changed in ILPer that might cause such issues?

Since ILPer 2.0 there have been two mass storage emulations. HDRIVE1 is a high-capacity emulation with a default configuration of 16MB. Perhaps larger than the 41 can handle. Try using the HP9114B emulation.

The dimensions of the drives can be modified using the setup file.

Dave

[J-F Garnier]

(01-26-2016 10:47 PM)Dave Frederickson Wrote:  

(01-26-2016 10:30 PM)Jurgen Keller Wrote:  Any idea what changed in ILPer that might cause such issues?

Since ILPer 2.0 there have been two mass storage emulations. HDRIVE1 is a high-capacity emulation with a default configuration of 16MB. Perhaps larger than the 41 can handle. Try using the HP9114B emulation.

I think it's more basic than that and at the same time more tricky.

The difficulty is the way the HP-41 is managing multiple mass storage units. When writing a file, the HP41 will scan ALL mass storage units to find if the file already exists. And if one of the units has no disc, you will get a NO MEDM error, even if the operation was targeting an other unit. See the HP-IL manual the section "Using Multiple Mass Storage Devices" (page 39 english edition)
Solution: initialize (NEWM) the 2nd unit disk.

J-F

[Jurgen Keller]

J-F is right, that's exactly the problem. I was not aware of this subtle change in using ILPer. Mea culpa, RTFM! Now I have read the related section in the HP-IL manual and it makes perfect sense.

Well, software is only as good as its users, and yesterday night it looks like my brain was in "MALFUNCTION" mode. Thanks for your help, and sorry for having blamed ILPer too hastily.

[jch]

(01-27-2016 07:54 AM)J-F Garnier Wrote:  The difficulty is the way the HP-41 is managing multiple mass storage units. When writing a file, the HP41 will scan ALL mass storage units to find if the file already exists. And if one of the units has no disc, you will get a NO MEDM error, even if the operation was targeting an other unit. See the HP-IL manual the section "Using Multiple Mass Storage Devices" (page 39 english edition)
Solution: initialize (NEWM) the 2nd unit disk.

This has always questioned me.
Does HP-71B behaves the same way ?

Jean-Christophe.

[J-F Garnier]

(01-27-2016 08:23 PM)jch Wrote:  

(01-27-2016 07:54 AM)J-F Garnier Wrote:  The difficulty is the way the HP-41 is managing multiple mass storage units ...the HP41 will scan ALL mass storage units to find if the file already exists.

This has always questioned me.
Does HP-71B behaves the same way ?

No, the HP-71B explicitly uses a particular unit for any mass storage operation, specified by a HP-IL address, a device or class identifier, or even a volume name.

The HP-41C uses the loop as automatically as possible for display/printer and mass storage operations (also for plotter with the PLOTTER ROM - unfortunately not yet available as a virtual device).

At the time, it was very unusual to use multiple units with the HP-41C, except for medium duplication, so these limitations had little importance.

[jch]

(01-28-2016 08:07 AM)J-F Garnier Wrote:  At the time, it was very unusual to use multiple units with the HP-41C, except for medium duplication, so these limitations had little importance.

Thanks J-F. Did HP planned a cloud of tape drive, or even some RAID 0 ;-).

I prefer to know where are my 'physical' backups.
I'm tickering to add some HP-IL extensions for Free42, and I scrupled giving up this feature, but no more scruples now !

BTW, I'm using EMU41 with HP-IL support (both with internal devices and serial) and ILPER to help me to figure out the guts of the system.
Thank you J-F and Christoph for these great gifts to the community.

Jean-Christophe.