Re: Science Project with HP41CX and Arduino? Message #5 Posted by Garth Wilson on 2 Jan 2012, 5:17 a.m., in response to message #3 by Fouad M. Kaadou
HPIL is a highly intelligent interface method that allows dozens of devices to be connected at once. There are interface adapters from HPIL to IEEE-488, parallel, RS-232, and video (I have all of these) but they're not cheap or easy to find these days. The HP-41 can handle all of these at once, and more, but be forewarned that it is not a fast machine. The HP-71 ran HPIL about 30 times as fast as the 41 did (around 5,000 bytes per second versus 150), and can process the incoming and outgoing info much faster too.
The HP-50g is in production today and is much faster than either of these, and, although it does not have HPIL, does have a serial port which I believe can be controlled to do a lot with it, if you write your software and make your devices to add the intelligence you need to split out signals to various processes and so on. I've used the 41 and 71 to control a lot of instrumentation and take data. Although I have a 50g, I can't say I'm familiar with it, and I think going the 50g route would require a lot more custom programming (it's not for casual users); but if you haven't already made a big investment in time and equipment with the 41 or 71, I tend to think the 50g might be the better way for you to go, based on computing power as well as support. Perhaps others can comment on that note.
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