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HP Forum Archive 13

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copying hp 85 tape to another tape
Message #1 Posted by NORM on 18 June 2003, 11:19 a.m.

i have alot of hp 85 tapes that run instrument tests and calibrations using the hpib bus. i was able to copy the program files by loading the program to the hp85, then putting in a blank tape then doing a store"prog.name" for each program on the tape. however, when it came time to store data type files i could not do it. in this case the data file is called "macro1" i would like to store it but am not sure how to do it. obviously the programs will not run on the newly copied tape without this data file. if anyone out there can help i would greatly appreciate it. thank you in advance, norm

      
Re: copying hp 85 tape to another tape
Message #2 Posted by jr (italy) on 18 June 2003, 4:51 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by NORM

Norm,

Is the "new" tape formatted?? I know silly question.

jr

      
Re: copying hp 85 tape to another tape
Message #3 Posted by Vassilis Prevelakis on 18 June 2003, 9:08 p.m.,
in response to message #1 by NORM

If you can go via a disk drive, life will be far easier since you can copy everything onto the floppy and then back onto the new tape.

The reason why you are having trouble with the data file is because the HP-85's LOAD and STORE commands are designed to deal with program files, not data, binary, graphic, etc files.

If you know the type and structure of the data file you can write a small basic program to read it in memory and then (after you change tapes) write it back onto tape.

I am amazed, however, that HP did not provide some sort of backup facility for base configuration HP85s. If anybody has another solution, I'd be delighted to hear it.

**vp

            
Re: copying hp 85 tape to another tape
Message #4 Posted by Ellis Easley on 18 June 2003, 10:59 p.m.,
in response to message #3 by Vassilis Prevelakis

Was that one of the reasons for adding the extended memory and RAMDisk code to the "B" versions?

                  
Re: copying hp 85 tape to another tape
Message #5 Posted by Vassilis Prevelakis on 19 June 2003, 7:50 a.m.,
in response to message #4 by Ellis Easley

Ellis Easley wrote:
> Was that one of the reasons for adding the extended memory and RAMDisk code to the "B" versions? 

Good idea. I didn't think of the RAMDisk (probably because all my 85's are A models). But, you are right the RAMdisk can be used to hold the contents of the tape during the transfer. However, as the tape can store about 200K, if you do not have any HP82908A or HP82909A memory modules, you may have to do the transfer in multiple steps.

I am not sure what the RAMdisk syntax looks like (you can find about it in the HP85B manual on the MoHPC disks), but to copy stuff from tape to disk you have to do the following.

COPY ":T" TO ":D700"
Assuming your disk drive's address is 700. Now place a new tape into drive and initialize it using
ERASETAPE
and, finally copy files to the new tape
COPY ":D700" TO ":T"

**vp

                        
HP 86/87 BACKUP
Message #6 Posted by Vassilis Prevelakis on 19 June 2003, 8:37 a.m.,
in response to message #5 by Vassilis Prevelakis

A bit off topic but note that if you have an HP86 or 87 with a single disk drive, you can still make backup of disks using the BACKUP utility from the HP87 demo disk.

The demo disk is at http://www.series80.org/Programs/DEMO87/index.html

Instructions on transfering these files to HP 87 disks http://www.series80.org/Programs

Note that for BACKUP to work you need to have at least the following files from the demo disk:

r           BPGM   256      1    768  r.BIN
BACKUP      PROG   256      2   1024  BACKUP.BIN
 backup     PROG   256     29   7936  _backup.BIN
UTIL/1      BPGM   256     12   3584  UTIL_1.BIN
ASKIOB      BPGM   256      5   1792  ASKIOB.BIN

**vp


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