Update of ILper v2.3, ILDosLink v1.05, ILVideo v1.35 and ILVideo80 v1.25

[Christoph Giesselink]

Just a small update of ILPer to 2.3, ILDosLink, ILVideo and ILVideo80 available at http://hp.giesselink.com/hpil.htm.

The main change is, that a device as active talker now checks if the incoming data frame is equal to the last send data frame. If not, immediately an ETE frame is send instead of the regular ETO frame at the end. So the controller has the possibilty to detect transmission errors.

Be aware that the HP41 don't recognize all ETE ended transfers as error. Further the emulators Emu71/DOS and Emu71/Win until v1.09 working as controller don't recognize any ETE ended transfers either.

During this work, another issue with a device as active talker was recognized. In prior versions the active talker replaced the incoming data frame by a new data frame without preserving the SRQ bit. This has been fixed also.

ILPer, ILDosLink, ILVideo and ILVideo80 got these fixes.

To quit discussions about the AID 46 and the ID$ "DISPLAY\r\n" for the generic printer in ILPer, the printer AID now can also be changed in the registry/settings file like the ID$. The AID value is not restricted by software, so you should know what you do changing this number!

Just a short history:

The AID 46 with the ID$ "DISPLAY\r" was used in the latest JFG VB ILPer version 1.35. The current ILPer version still use this ID combination. You may recognize that AID 46 (no real device has this ID?) is a ID reserved for printers but the ID$ tells something different beeing a display device.

The AID was changed in VB ILPer v1.33, before in 1.31 it was 48, which is the AID of a HP-82163A, a display device and so we have the ID$ remainder "DISPLAY\r".

[J-F Garnier]

(01-16-2018 07:02 PM)Christoph Giesselink Wrote:  The AID was changed in VB ILPer v1.33, before in 1.31 it was 48, which is the AID of a HP-82163A, a display device and so we have the ID$ remainder "DISPLAY\r".

(01-16-2018 10:02 PM)Mike (Stgt) Wrote:  Only one word about the AID/ID$ mismatch discussion everyone may solve to his flavor now -- I have no problem with a virtul printer not printing on real paper, but use a square on my display as 'virtual paper'. But to classify a device (accordant its capabilities) with it's AID as some kind of a printer but baptise it with an ID$ 'DISPLAY' just sets the border between virtual and real to (or inside) the simulated device. Some kind of para-virtualisation.

:-)

Some background on the choice of AID/ID$ of the ILPer 'printer': in 2008 I wrote the VB version of ILPer to provide a support tool of the PIL-Box. I re-used the code that comes from my Emu41/71 (and actually comes from a previous ILPER DOS version - 1990 era).
In those previous versions, the "DISPLAY" device is a true display that supports the HP escape sequences for cursor control. My knowledge of VB was too limited to support these escape sequences in the Windows version so I just ignored them.
I then realized that keeping a display AID was causing problems with the HP71 because this machine, by default, searches for a display and uses it if found. This produced bad outputs.
So I changed the AID to a generic printer (46), but didn't change the ID$ as it didn't harm. With this change you can now do DISPLAY IS PRINTER (on the HP71) and have correct outputs.

In conclusion, I recommend to keep a printer-class AID for the ILPer printer window. You may change the ID$ if you prefer to have some consistency :-) just remember that the HP41 needs a 7-character ID$ for FINDID to work correctly.
Of course you are free to experiment !

Quote:At least I have now the chance to end this situation with two "Displays", one of them a virtual printer. Current output of LCAT run in Emu41 under DOSBox with ILPilsim and ILPer "attached":

Code:

5 DEVICES
PRIMARY ADR. 2
ADR   ID    AID  CLASS 
01 DISPLAY  48 DISPLAY
02 DISPLAY  46 PRINTER
03 HP9114B  16 MASS ST
04 HDRIVE1  16 MASS ST
05 DOSLINK  78 INTRFCE

Nice setup. Is the challenge to find out how you create this config? :-)

J-F